The legacy of the

Deaconess movement to

American nursing

Presentation for Eastern Nurses Research Society, March 20, 2009

Session B1: Historical, Philosophy and

Theoretical Issues in Nursing Research

Christine Malmgreen, RN-BC MS MA CHES

Purpose: Research roots of nursing practice interventions to enhance health

of individuals and communities

Historical antecedents of Parish Nursing

The 19th century Deaconess Movement emanated from Germany to America

in 1849

A 19th Century “movement”

In search of our

Heritage

The deaconesses are buried in Philadelphia's historic Woodlands

Cemetery in what is known as the "Nurses Corner” SOURCE: http://www.aahn.org/gravesites/deaconess.html

Mark Concepcion and Edward Chen

Nurse-deaconesses

Brought nursing interventions– Through healing institutions

within the community

Intrepid 19th century women,

• progenitors of:– Hospital nursing schools– settlement houses– community health nursing organizations

Deaconess Susan Trevor Knapp

(1903)

Dean, New York Training School

The “how”-Primary Sources

• Archival records-Philadelphia’s Lutheran Deaconess Home – Sr Magdalene’s reminiscences

– Pittsburg Infirmary Annual Reports

• Women’s Home Missionary Society annual reports of the Methodist Episcopal Church

• Methodist Hospital of Brooklyn, archives

• Lutheran Medical Center- Norwegian Relief Society Annual reports

Sister Elizabeth Fedde’s diary (translated)

•AJN from 1900-1915

Nursing historians

– Dock

– Doyle

– Wald

– Goodnow

– Goodrich

– Woolsey

Religious writers of a century ago ~Primary and secondary sources

(Male)

– Wentz– Wheeler– Passavant– Buckley – Bachmann– Goldner – Fritschel – Wentz (Fliedner biographer)

(Female)

– Bancroft-Robinson– Rider-Meyer– Tomkinson– Ochse

Secondary sourcesproviding supporting evidence

Social historians

– Welter*– Reverby– Melosh– Smith-Rosenberg– Rosenberg– Dougherty

• Medical historians

– Vogel -Susser– Illich -Rosner– Berlinger– Starr

–Welter*

Organizing Framework

The Cult of True Womanhood• Attributes/four cardinal virtues:

– Piety– Purity– Submissiveness– Domesticity

• Welter, B. (1966). The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860 American Quarterly, 18 (2) Part 1 pp. 151-174

Deaconess Elizabeth Ferard, first Deaconess in the Anglican Communion (England)

–Domesticity

The “Cult”• Metaphor for separate

“sphere” of womanhood

Barbara Welter – reinforced centrality of

“separate spheres”

• “A stereotype so encouraging yet, constraining…”

• Commentary –Kerber, L. (1997). Toward an Intellectual History of Women -  Essays

Woman’s greatest task ~ care for the home

• CONTEMORARY

POPULAR

LITERATURE– The Young

Ladies Class Book

Domesticity• Women in the home

• Housework - “uplifting”

• Quote from contemporary source, women’s magazine:

"The science of housekeeping affords exercise for the judgment and energy, ready

recollection, and patient self-possession, that are the characteristics of a superior

mind”

• Making beds-good exercise!

Woman’s most important function ~NURSING

“Enough illnesses… to give 19th century American woman nursing experience”

• Call of the sickroom

– Patience– Mercy– Gentleness

• Welter (1987)

Perfection of True Womanhood “trained to believe”

…carried the seeds of its own destruction

If woman were so very little less than the angels, should she take a more active part

in running the world? (especially since men were making such a hash of

things) 

Beautiful and useful!

Kaiserswerth, the first deaconess home, Germany, 1836

Domesticity and woman as “nurse”

Theodore Fliedner, 1836

First wife, Fredrike Munster

Fliedner

(died, 1846)

Women of Kaiserswerth

Sister Gertrude Reichardt, First deaconess, 1836

The second Mrs Fliedner- Caroline Bertheau Fliedner

Nurses at Kaiserswerth

Visited Kaiserswerth, 1900

3 month stay at Kaiserswerth, 1850

Lavinia Dock

But he doesn’t come alone

1849Fliedner comes to America

Sister Elizabeth Hupperts

with three deaconesses who accompanied her and Pastor Fliedner to Pittsburgh in 1849

The deaconess movement comes to America

The first American Deaconess

Katherine Louise Martens, The first Deaconess consecrated on American soil (1851)

Deaconess Nurses ~ end of century

1840s ~ Episcopals-1st American diaconate

1849 ~ Lutherans initiate 1st Motherhouse

1883-1900 ~ More European deaconesses

1886-1915 Methodist Women’s Home

Missionary society takes up the cause

1873 ~“Trained nursing” –first 3 training

schools on the “Nightingale model”

•1883-Elizabeth Fedde, Norwegian Lutheran nurse-Deaconess come from Oslo Norway comes to Brooklyn, NY

•1884-Seven sisters from an independent group of deaconesses from Iserlon Wesphalia, Germany come to Philadelphia

Sister Elizabeth

…sent to Brooklyn?

Norwegian Lutheran

Deaconess missionary…

“Where ever she hears of cases of misery, poverty or

degradation…

she [Sr Elizabeth] goes to see the sufferers and ministers to their wants, either of body or soul. Her character and work are already

so well know and appreciated among the poor Norwegians that they are constantly

sending for her” (Norwegian Relief Society annual report, 1885).

Norwegian Lutheran Deaconess Hospital in

Brooklyn, NY

Sister Elizabeth Fedde found so much need in homes, hospitals, ships in the harbor, and even the streets that by 1886 she started a deaconess hospital. 

The German (deaconess) hospital, Philadelphia, Pa

Later renamed, LANKANAU HOSPITAL”

“…nothing short of transplanting the blessed sisterhood of the

diaconate to this country”-John D. Lankenau

John Lankanau and the deaconesses

The Mary Drexel Deaconess Home in Philadelphia

Domesticity Woman as

guardian of public hearth

The Motherhousea woman home

Pre-1849-Nuns in com-munity

1883-1903Proliferation of

Motherhouses by Lutherans and Methodists

1883-4: Diaconates established in Philadelphia & Brooklyn

1849Deaconesses

arrive-development of new model of

nursing & sisterhood

1889-1930: Secular settlement houses

1873-1883: nursing schools grow within

hospitals (22)

1836

1936

1886 Methodist Episcopal church joins

the Movement

The evolution of a movement from an ideology

Bethany Deaconess Home and Hospital ~ 1893

Vision for Community Health Nursing

• Another gift from the

Motherhouse

• Harbinger of the “woman’s”

professions

• Protestant sisterhoods living

and working in community

• Secular women in Settlement houses

The Methodist Episcopal Deaconess Movement

• “Serving to preserve the community’s hearth & health” (Annual Reports)

• Used ideology of “Home and Hearth” as justification to go Public Hearth for the betterment of society

METHODIST EPISCOPAL GENERAL CONFERENCE

Lucy Rider MeyerChicago, Ill

WOMAN’S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETYJane Bancroft Robinson

Washington, DC

Conclusion

• Domesticity facilitated– “Breaking free of the

bonds of household drudgery”

• Replacing it with PROFESSIONALISM

• A satisfaction in “making a difference”

• Hospital-based and community health nursing flourished

• Parish Nursing a blooming flower ~