'Doctress' Rebecca Crumpler

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm Tracy V.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
I accidentally picked an episode that has a little bit
of a connection to George Washington Williams, who we just
talked about. It might not be a direct connection though.
Today we are talking about Rebecca Crumpler, who started attending
Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury, Massachusetts in eighteen seventies. This

(00:37):
was right around the time that George Washington Williams was
pastor there. I did not find confirmation on like the
exact timeline when she started attending this church, so it's
not totally clear whether they definitely were there at the
same time, but based on this timeline, it is possible.

(00:57):
Rebecca Crumpler was the first black woman in the United
States to earn a medical degree. She also wrote one
of the first, if not the first, medical texts by
a black person in the United States. When she graduated,
the New England Female Medical College was conferring the degree

(01:17):
Doctress of Medicine, and that title might seem disparaging or
belittling today, but it's one that she really seems to
have embraced because to her it signified something important about
her work, which we will be talking about. Rebecca Davis
was born on February eighth, eighteen thirty one, in Christiana, Delaware.

(01:40):
Her parents were Absolom and Matilda Davis, but Rebecca spent
a lot of her childhood being raised by an aunt
in Pennsylvania. Christiana is roughly ten miles from the Pennsylvania border,
so it is possible that she was still able to
see her parents while she was in her aunt's care.
We don't have much detail about her life, though, it's

(02:01):
not even clear how long her parents lived after she
was born or why she was raised by an aunt.
But Delaware was a slave state and Pennsylvania had passed
a gradual Abolition Act in seventeen eighty. The number of
people enslaved in Pennsylvania had declined after that, so there
were fewer than one hundred remaining by the time Rebecca

(02:23):
was born, so it's possible that her family thought that
Rebecca would be safer in Pennsylvania than in Delaware. At
the same time, black people were still at risk throughout
the United States, even if they were free. The Fugitive
Slave Clause in Article four of the US Constitution specified
that people could not free themselves from bondage in one

(02:45):
state by escaping to another state. The Fugitive Slave Act
of seventeen ninety three created a legal mechanism to enforce
this clause, and the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty,
passed when Rebecca was nineteen, expanded that earlier act and
led to a huge increase in free black people being
kidnapped and enslaved. So it's possible that that was part

(03:09):
of Rebecca's decision to move farther north to Massachusetts in
the eighteen fifties. By eighteen fifty two, she was working
in Charlestown, which is part of Boston now but at
the time was a separate city. She worked as a nurse,
and her initial nursing training was informal. As Davis would
later write, quote, having been reared by a kind aunt

(03:31):
in Pennsylvania, whose usefulness with the sick was continually sought,
I early conceived a liking for and sought every opportunity
to be in a position to relieve the sufferings of others.
This kind of informal training was not at all unusual.
Nursing had not evolved as a formalized profession yet. There

(03:53):
were not any nursing schools in the US or Europe,
so most people who were working as nurses were learning
from a family member or somebody else in their community.
Rebecca got married on April nineteenth, eighteen fifty two, to
a man named Wyatt Lee. We don't know much about
Wyatt except that he was a laborer born in Prince
George County, Virginia. He had previously been enslaved, and he

(04:16):
had a son named Albert from an earlier marriage. Albert
sadly died at the age of eight of what may
have been some kind of heart failure. That was just
about a year after Rebecca and Wyatt got married. Rebecca
worked as a nurse in Charlestown for about eight years,
and in eighteen sixty some of the doctors she had
worked for gave her letters of recommendation that she used

(04:39):
to apply to the New England Female Medical College. This
medical school had been founded as Boston Female Medical College
in eighteen forty eight, and it was the first institution
in the United States to formally offer medical training to women.
Its founder, Samuel Gregory was the author of a work
called man Midwhiffery Exposed and Corrected, or the employment of

(05:03):
men to attend women in childbirth and in other delicate circumstances,
shown to be a modern innovation, unnecessary, unnatural, and injurious
to the physical welfare of the community, and pernicious in
its influence on professional and public morality, and the whole
proved by numerous facts in the testimony of the most
eminent physicians in Boston, New York, and other places, and

(05:26):
the education and employment of midwives recommended. As is obvious
from this very long title, he thought it was indecent
for male doctors to attend women who were giving birth,
and he thought that women should be trained.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
To do it. The Female Medical College initially offered a
basic midwiffery program, and in eighteen fifty its curriculum expanded
to include more comprehensive medical training. By that point, Gregory
had also written letter to ladies in favor of female
physicians for their own sex. This was a nearly fifty

(06:01):
page letter that started quote, it is not a recent
or hastily formed opinion on the part of the writer
that there ought to be a class of females thoroughly
educated and qualified to act as medical advisors and professional
attendance in those departments of practice which relate particularly to
their own sex. The daughter, the wife, the mother.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Rebecca Lee was accepted into this program, but she had
to put her education on hold for a while to
care for her husband, who had contracted tuberculosis. Wyatt died
in April of eighteen sixty three, and after his death,
Rebecca returned to school. She graduated on February twenty fourth,
eighteen sixty four, with the degree Doctress of Medicine. There

(06:46):
was apparently some hesitation around allowing her to graduate. Tracy
wasn't able to find specifics, so we can't really say
whether she genuinely struggled with the coursework, or whether her
examiner's opinions of her performance were influenced by racism or
some combination of the two. According to a transcript of
the faculty notes, quote, owing to the deficiencies in the

(07:08):
academic education of missus Lee and the slow progress she
has made in her professional studies, we have hesitated very
seriously in recommending her certification. The school did ultimately allow
her to graduate out of deference to the Board of
Trustees and to public feeling. Nothing spells out the details

(07:29):
of that public feeling, but in eighteen sixty four, the
US was well into the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln had
issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and Massachusetts had become a focal
point in the fight to abolish slavery. Regarding the title doctress,
eighteen sixty four seems to be the first year that
the school used this title for its graduates, but the

(07:51):
question of what to call women doctors wasn't entirely settled,
and at least in some years, the school conferred the
degree as doctor or as doctress, depending on the preference
of the individual graduate. Rebecca Lee Crumpler later wrote about
it in her own book, making it clear that she

(08:11):
thought doctress was the correct title for her quote, there
can be no more important duties to perform in the
capacity of housekeeping than that of caring for the helpless babe. Women. Doctors,
or more properly speaking, doctresses of medicine, although usually treated
with less courtesy by doctors, are nevertheless by them considered

(08:33):
to be in their proper sphere in the confinement room
and nursery. While I feel under no obligations to them
for their charity. I must admit their honesty and truthfulness
in the matter, For surely women cannot fill a single
position in the world so freighted with material out of
which the moral and physical condition of humanity can be affected,

(08:54):
either for good or evil.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Graduating from the New England Female Medical College made Rebecca
Lee the first black woman in the US to earn
an MD. At that point, there were about fifty four
thousand doctors in the United States, and only about three
hundred of those were women, and only one black woman.
She wasn't the United States first black doctor, though that's

(09:19):
typically recognized as James Durham, who is on my list
for an episode if I can find enough information. Durham
didn't have a formal medical degree, though he was enslaved
from birth and learned medicine from the doctors who enslaved him.
Durham's work as a doctor attracted the attention of doctor
Benjamin Rush, who was so impressed with it that he

(09:41):
read a paper Durham wrote on diphtheria before the College
of Physicians of Pennsylvania. The first black person from the
United States to earn a medical degree was James McCune
Smith in eighteen thirty seven, although he earned that degree
in Scotland because US medical schools wouldn't admit him because
of his race. The first black American to earn an

(10:03):
MD from a US institution was David J. Peck, who
graduated from Rush Medical College, Chicago in eighteen forty seven.
We will talk more about Rebecca Crumpler's life after we
pause for a sponsor break. After graduating from the New

(10:27):
England Female Medical College as a doctress of medicine, Rebecca
Lee went to Canada to gain some more experience in
Saint Johns d Brunswick. On May twenty fourth, eighteen sixty five,
she married Arthur Crumpler.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Arthur was a blacksmith. He had been enslaved in Virginia
and had been hired out to somebody in that trade. Eventually,
Arthur had been set up with a shop of his own,
which of course still belonged to his enslaver, but he
had escaped at the start of the Civil War.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Arthur initially wound up at Fort Monroe, which we have
taught talked about on the show before. Fort Monroe was
the only federal fort in the Upper South to remain
under the control of the United States for the duration
of the war. It was under the command of Major
General Benjamin Franklin Butler, that is, the person who declared
three men who had liberated themselves from slavery and escaped

(11:18):
to the fort in eighteen sixty one to be contraband
of war. The term contraband came to describe enslaved people
who escaped to US territory or were captured by the
US army, and the United States eventually established contraband camps
all over the territory that it controlled. Our episode on
these camps was a Saturday Classic in February of twenty

(11:40):
twenty three.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Eventually, Rebecca and Arthur made their way back to Boston,
but soon after the Civil War ended, Rebecca saw a
need for her skills in Virginia, and her words quote
on my return after the close of the Confederate War,
my mind centered upon Richmond, the capital city of Virginia,
as the proper field for real missionary work, and one

(12:03):
that would present ample opportunities to become acquainted with the
diseases of women and children. During my stay there, nearly
every hour was improved in that sphere of labor. The
last quarter of the year eighteen sixty six, I was enabled,
through the agency of the Bureau under General Brown, to
have access each day to a very large number of

(12:23):
the indigent and others of different classes, and a population
of over thirty thousand colored So that Bureau, of course
was the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, better
known as the Freedman's Bureau.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
In about eighteen sixty nine, Crumpler went back to Boston,
where she lived and practiced medicine on the north slope
of Beacon Hill, the same neighborhood as Kitty Knox, who
we talked about on the show last year, whose family
moved there a little more than ten years later. In Boston,
Crumpler quote entered into the work with renewed vigor, practicing

(12:58):
outside and receiving children in the house for treatment. In
eighteen seventy, Rebecca and Arthur had a daughter, Lizzie Sinclair Crumpler,
but she doesn't appear in later historical records, and it's
possible that she died in childhood.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Around this time, New England Female Medical College, where she'd graduated,
fell into financial difficulties. A major fire in eighteen seventy two,
destroyed a huge part of Boston's financial district and a
number of businesses and warehouses. This was financially devastating for
some of the investors who had been keeping the school afloat.

(13:35):
The school's founder, doctor Samuel Gregory, also died of tuberculosis
that same year. The school started looking for options that
would allow it to stay open, ultimately merging with Boston University.
BU took on the medical college's debts, and the medical
school started also enrolling men, which made this the first
accredited co educational medical school in the US. It is

(13:59):
now Austin University Chobanian and Avidesian School of Medicine. In
the eighteen seventies, Crumpler worked with an organization of ladies
to help care for sick women and children in Boston
and to offer affordable boarding to the children of working women.
Her medical practice also focused on the care and treatment
of women and children at a time when the fields

(14:20):
of obstetrics, gynecology, and pediatrics were in their infancy and
largely being dominated by male doctors. During these years, the
Crumplers also started attending Twelfth Baptist Church, and they continued
to be active and dedicated members there, even after moving
out of the neighborhood years later. Their move to another
church ultimately followed allegations of impropriety involving the pastor and

(14:45):
an eighteen year old member of the church choir. In
the mid eighteen seventies, Crumpler spent some time outside of
Boston teaching in other communities. When abolitionist and politician Charles
Sumner died in eighteen seventy four, Crumpler was in Woamington, Delaware,
and she read a poem that she had written herself
at a service that was held in his honor at

(15:06):
the city's Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church. I wish we had
this poem. To my knowledge, we don't. After returning to
Boston in eighteen seventy five, Crumpler enrolled as a special
student in mathematics at West Newton English and Classical School.
There's a little bit of confusion here. There are some
sources that say that Crumpler attended this school much earlier,

(15:29):
back in the eighteen fifties before going to medical school.
But there's a book of the school's history called an
Illustrated Biographical Catalog of the Principles Teachers and Students of
the West Newton English and Classical School, and that book
gives her first year of enrollment as eighteen seventy five.
It is not impossible that this is some kind of

(15:49):
error and that she really did go to the school
much earlier. But if that eighteen seventy five year is correct,
we don't really know what led her to wanting to
make a special study of math at the aige of
forty four. I'm very curious about all of this.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
I mean, I get it sometimes you want to learn
new stuff. But she may have chosen this particular school
because her husband had become friends with its founder, Nathaniel
t Allen, after arriving in Boston. According to one account,
Arthur Crumpler was one of several so called Condra bands
who were hired in and around West Newton during the

(16:24):
Civil War, and Alan taught him how to read. That
same account mentions Rebecca going to the school before medical school,
and a later interview with Arthur Crumpler suggests he didn't
know how to read until much later. So all of
this is pretty unclear in terms of its timeline accuracy.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, it reads like a person's like personal recollection of
the events as they happened, and I don't really know
how much it aligns with what we can document. In
eighteen eighty the Crumpler's move from Beacon Hill to Hyde Park,
which is the neighborhood of Boston today but was at
the time its own operated town several miles south of
the city. She continued to practice medicine, and in eighteen

(17:05):
eighty three she published a book of medical discourses in
two parts. We will be talking about this book more
in just a bit. Rebecca Crumpler seems to have continued
working as a doctor until the end of her life.
In eighteen ninety four, she and her practice were mentioned
in an article in the Boston Globe. This was sort
of a profile of the most prominent people in Boston's

(17:27):
black community, which at that point numbered about ten thousand people.
This write upset of her quote, Doctor Crumpler is the
one woman who, as a physician, made an enviable place
for herself in the ranks of the medical fraternity. Doctor
Crumpler is the author of rather a valuable book, Medical Discourses.
She is a very pleasant and intellectual woman and an

(17:49):
indefatigable church worker. This article also went on to describe
her appearance, as it did for many of the other
women included in the article. The Hyde Park Directory and
Town Register also listed her as a physician and her
husband as a laborer in its eighteen ninety five eighteen
ninety six edition. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler died on March ninth,

(18:11):
eighteen ninety five, at the age of sixty four. Her
cause of death was given as fibroid tumors. She was
buried in Fairview Cemetery in Hyde Park. This cemetery had
been open for just about two years, and a lot
of the people who were buried there, really in its
first couple of decades, didn't have their graves marked in
any way. That was true for Crumpler until very recently,

(18:35):
which is something else that we will be talking about
in a little bit.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
But first we're going to get into detail about her book,
and we will do that after we pause for a
sponsor break.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Rebecca Crumpler's A Book of Medical Discourses in two Parts,
published in eighteen eighty three, was one of the first
medical texts by a black person to be published in
the United States, if not the first, and as was
the case.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
With Crumpler's work as a doctor. It was really.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Focused on women and children. Its dedication read quote to mothers, nurses,
and all who may desire to mitigate the afflictions of
the human race. This book is prayerfully offered.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
She went on to say, quote, indeed, I desire that
my book shall be as a primary reader in the
hands of every woman, and yet nonetheless suited to any
who may be conversant with all branches of medical science.
If women are permitted to read and reflect for themselves,
it is hardly possible that they will say it is
uninteresting to them, or that it should only be read

(19:42):
by men.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
This book was full of health and medical advice, interwoven
with Crumpler's own experiences and anecdotes about things she had
experienced and seen in her nearly two decades of medical practice,
and she allowed this book to stand on its own
me and her own knowledge and experience, unlike a number
of books on other subjects by black women that were

(20:05):
written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which were introduced
by white men. She wrote the introduction for this book herself.
She wrote this book at a time when ideas around
sex and gender and gender roles were a lot more
binary and rigid than they are today. Women were expected
to have and raise children almost without exception, so she

(20:28):
began with her thoughts on marriage as it related to
the health of a couple's future children. In her opinion,
girls should get married at about nineteen or twenty, because
getting married and becoming pregnant before their bodies were mature
led to weekly children. She thought that the same was
true for women who gave birth and much older ages,
and she thought that men should be between the ages

(20:50):
of twenty two and twenty five by the time they
took on the responsibility of having a family. From there,
she described how in her experience, the symptoms of early
pregnancy could be mistaken for a cold, but the treatments
for cold symptoms would have no effect if they were
really being caused by pregnancy. She also thought that repeatedly

(21:11):
trying to treat these symptoms could disregulate the body, and
she wrote quotes suffice it to say that too frequent
physicking and over indulgence in intoxicating liquors and tobacco will
cause sickly diminutive offspring, to say nothing of premature births.
A big focus of her work and this book was
the period of confinement after giving birth, a period that

(21:34):
Crumpler referred.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
To just as the months. This included correct methods for
bathing newborns. She criticized the use of cold water or
even ice water for stimulating newborn circulation, saying that she
had seen infants get sick or die after becoming too
cold from this practice, and she advised that soaps, even
soaps that were advertised as pure baby soap, were too

(21:57):
irritating to use on newborn skin. Instead, she recommended using
clean cloth made of soft linen or cotton, dipped in
sweet oil or melted lard to gently clean the baby,
wiping them dry with clean flannel. She also criticized male
doctors who usually just left as soon as the umbilical
cord was cut quote for it is not at all

(22:20):
reasonable to conclude that because a woman is the mother
of many children, she is an expert in the matter
of washing and dressing the newborn, or of relieving the
various ailments incidents upon child bearing. Crumpler had strong opinions
on the uselessness of so called baby medicines during the
first month of life, writing quote probably the greatest amount

(22:43):
of mischief arising from the administration of baby teas lies
in the fact that they are not given with the
least certainty as to their effect upon the system of
the child, whether to nourish the blood or physic the bowels.
She went on to say, quote, it would be well
to notice that children who are dosed during inna infancy
for every supposed ill, are seldom robust. She also deemed

(23:05):
patent cough syrups to be unsafe, as was the practice
of giving a quote weak toddy, meaning diluted alcohol to
babies to get them to sleep. She offered advice on
what could be fed to babies if their mothers could
not produce milk, but she criticized the practice of rich
women hiring wet nurses. Quote A lady of wealth may

(23:27):
get discouraged and give her babe to the care of another,
whose babe may, in consequence, have to be put in
some charity house or otherwise to board. Her babe may
thrive and live, while that of her wet nurse may
soon pine away and die. No one could avoid distressing
others unless he strives to the best of his ability
to bear his own burdens. Some of her writing touched

(23:50):
on the ideas of public health and disease prevention at
a time when these fields were just starting to develop.
For example, quote, it is my serious opinion that thoul
of children die annually in the city of Boston under
five years of age from diseases brought on through the
excitement of expecting to go to school. Their early change

(24:10):
the exposures from actual compulsory attendance. While the system has
barely recovered from a lengthy prostration and now needing fostering
at home with regular meals and plenty of toys for amusement.
Many are the little children of three and a half,
four and a half, and five years that are still
getting teeth sent out in the streets to saunter long

(24:31):
in the chill air of our hill streets to some schoolhouse.
Heaven bless our schools, for they are invaluable. But may
God change the minds of the people as to such
early exposures being best for the credit of our commonwealth.
She's stressed the need for good ventilation, something that came
up a lot in nineteenth century riding about health and disease.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Quote. Windows can be dropped from the top or a
swinging pane set in the top of the sash. It's
a very good w way to ventilate or let in
fresh air. So few people that depend on their bodily
strength from day to day stop to think that pure
air is the all essential element, and that without light,
air and sun in their dwellings, the poisonous gases cannot

(25:15):
leave them, but they must sooner or later succumb to them.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
And she acknowledged some of the ways that economic factors
play a part in all of this, although in a
way that suggests that she thought people could easily resolve
these issues just by making different choices. She wrote, quote, especially,
do some of the laboring women of my race appear
to work under heavy disadvantages. If the family is small,
they are never through with their work. If it is large,

(25:41):
there is a double excuse for having no time to rest.
Yet many real needful things are left undone. I have
often wondered if such housekeepers, whose own affairs are neglected,
and in whose homes things go to waste, while they
take so much upon them of other people's work, never
thought of the story of filling a hod at the
spigot that had no stopper at the bung our thoughts

(26:04):
were similar when it came to men who had to
work too hard to make ends meet.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Quote. So with our men who labor hard, they are
anxious to keep the wolf from the door, and they
thoughtlessly rise in the morning, go to work, perhaps without breakfast,
working for hours in a condition for odors contagious or
otherwise to affect the system. Thus the liabilities to colds
and the vital organs, which may go on for years
gradually undermining the general health, or may, as frequently happens,

(26:33):
develop in lung fever and consequent shattered constitution. The laboring
men of my race, generally speaking, take much better care
of the horses entrusted to their care than they do
of their own health. Were men just as particular about
what they themselves eat and drink, and how they dress
and sleep, the deaths of young men of thirty and
forty years would not be so common. Those who are

(26:55):
not careful of their health die early in this climate,
and their offspring die early.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
Crumpler's book was arranged in two parts, and the second
included more general advice, so things like relief for menstruation
pain recommended warm compresses rather than alcohol, or narcotics. She
had this to say about menopause quote avoid overheated rooms
or exciting scenes. Keep the bowels free without severe physic

(27:22):
use coarse plain food, Drink very little of fluids, avoid spices, stimulants,
and secure cheerful exercise for the mind with an abundance
of outdoor scenery. Cultivate a love for the gifts of
our heavenly Father. Seek to do good for those who
are worse off than yourself, and all will come out right.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
She also offered information on anatomy, with suggested treatments for
things like rheumatism, soft bones, hemorrhoids, colds, bronchitis, burns, and
sore throats. A lot of her advice was just really
straightforward and no nonsense, like here is her entry on
some common foot problem.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
Corns or callous whether on the feet of children or adults,
come from wearing shoes that are too short and too
wide or otherwise ill suited, the friction of which, when
walking creates festers, the matter of which dries and becomes
a corn. Treatment remove the cause, keep the feet clean
and comfortably clad. And she ended the book with a

(28:21):
recipe formula for making doctor Crumpler's vegetable alternative, and here
is how the recipe goes. Take of fresh Indian posy
and water pepper herbs each one ounce white pine bark
or tops one half ounce pourhound herb one fourth simmer
in two quarts of water in a covered vessel four

(28:42):
or five hours. Have three pints when strained. Then add
two and one half pounds of loaf sugar. Boil briskly
to a clear, thick syrup, Pour out and stir.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
In while hot. One teaspoon of pulverized mandrake root, strain
again through a fine cloth, and when cold, bottle and
keep in a cool, dark place. If petophill in the
concentrated mandrake is used, which I prefer, only one half
teaspoonful is required to a quart of syrup. Dose for
an adult from one half to two thirds of a

(29:16):
small wineglassful once a day while resting. Dose for small
children in case of bloating worms cough from half to
a whole teaspoonful at bedtime for a short while good
to remove old colds from continued exposure, morbid craving for tobacco,
alcoholic beverages, or other blood poisoning idols, for which the

(29:38):
dose is one teaspoonful in a glass of cold water.
At every inclination to drink, chew, or smoke.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
After this recipe, she noted, quote, perseverance will ensure success.
No remedy should be continued after relief is obtained. Too
much physicking impoverishes the blood.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
As we said early. Rebecca Crumpler's grave at Fairview Cemetery
in hyde Park was initially unmarked, and that was true
of many of the other early burials in that part
of the cemetery, including that of her husband, Arthur, who
died in nineteen ten. But both their grave sites were
marked in twenty twenty after a fundraising effort led by
the Friends of the Hyde Park Library under president Vicky Gall.

(30:23):
The podcast Hub History has an episode titled doctor Rebecca
Crumpler Forgotten No Longer that came out in August of
twenty twenty, and it includes audio from the ceremony after
these gravestones were installed.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Their markers have their names and the years of their
births and deaths on the front, and Rebecca's also says
quote the first black woman to earn a medical degree
in the US eighteen sixty four and then they have
additional inscriptions on the back. Rebecca's reads quote. The community
and the Commonwealth's four Medical Schools honored doctor Rebecca Crumpler

(30:56):
for her ceaseless courage, pioneering achievements, and his historic legacy.
Is a physician, author, nurse, missionary, an advocate for health
equity and social justice. And Arthur says quote enslaved at birth,
escaped to freedom, man of faith, Boston's oldest pupil Boston Globe,
April third, eighteen ninety eight. That Boston's oldest pupil is

(31:19):
a reference to an article about his taking night classes
at the age of seventy four. Since he had been
enslaved from birth, he hadn't been taught to read as
a child. That was illegal. Later on, he'd.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
Tried to teach himself, but he didn't get very far,
and he struggled with a later effort to take classes
because he had difficulty with his eyesight. Rebecca had done
most of his reading and writing for him during their marriage,
but when she died in eighteen ninety five, he wanted
to learn for himself. Also today, Rebecca Crumpler's Beacon Hill
home is a stop on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.

(31:56):
It is not currently a stop on the Black Heritage Trail,
although that trail does go directly past it on the
other side of the street. Also is a couple of
final notes. There is another Rebecca who is sometimes described
as the first black woman to earn an MD in
the United States. That is Rebecca Cole. She earned her
MD from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in eighteen

(32:18):
sixty seven, three years after Rebecca Crumpler earned the degree
of Doctress of Medicine. And there are no known pictures
of Rebecca Crumpler, but there's a lot of stuff on
the Internet that is accompanied by photos that are purportedly
of her. There are a couple of photos that just
don't have clear documentation of who they depict, and it

(32:42):
is not impossible that they could be of Rebecca Crumpler,
but we really do not know. The vast majority of
these photos that show up online, though, are of other
black women whose identities we do know. One of the
most commonly used photos is really Mary Eliza Mahoney, who
was the first black woman known to go through formal

(33:04):
training as a nurse in the US. She lived in
Boston and worked at the New England Hospital for Women
and Children. The hospital was founded in eighteen sixty two
with only women on its full time staff, and it
eventually opened the first nursing school in the US. Mahoney
graduated from that program in eighteen seventy nine.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Another commonly used photo is really of Georgia E. L.
Patton Washington, who went to Maheri Medical College and became
the second woman to graduate from there. She was the
first black woman to be licensed as both a doctor
and a surgeon in the state of Tennessee. And lastly,
there's an image of a medal or a coin stamped

(33:45):
with doctor Rebecca Lee eighteen thirty three. This seems to
have come from a set of commemorative coins commissioned or
created by Sun Oil Company as part of an award
named for doctor Charles Drew, who we've covered on.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
The show before. It's likely that this illustration is really
just meant to represent the idea of a black woman
doctor from the eighteen thirties. It's unclear what the year
eighteen thirty three is meant to signify, since that is
not her birth year and it is also not the
year that she became a doctor. So there's some mysteries
or perhaps just errors in the striking of that coin.

(34:20):
I had a hard time finding like concrete information about these,
like who else was in the coins? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
If I had went down a deeper rabbit hole on
that I might have found more about it. But yeah,
no pictures of her. Do you have listener mail? I
do have a little listener mail. Yes, this listener mail
is from Thomas and Thomas. This is actually from I
guess not that long ago. I've had it flagged to

(34:48):
read for a while, but Thomas, rot High, Holly and
Tracy writing in because it felt like the latest Unearthed
was full of things you put in for me. My
old University York, England got a mention, and someone I
remember from the archaeology department as well as my hometown
of Kings Lynn. I get why you don't get the
fuss about Shakespeare's floorboards. Ah, It's mainly a tactic to

(35:13):
raise the profile of what we usually called the guildhall.
Our other medieval guildhall became the town Hall because the
floor Shakespeare was on gets way more publicity than fifteenth
century wood floor. He needs so much upkeep and is
in a town rammed with historic buildings, so we need
a lot of outside help to keep our treasures for
the future generations. So we will at times be a

(35:35):
little absurd for attention. It's a lovely building. I've been
on the stage of a few times in concerts, mad
but delightful in the best way. Although today it is
again a theater. It was rescued by Lady Fermoy. Viewers
of the Crown will know her as Princess Diana's aunt
and the Queen Mother's lady in waiting. She made our

(35:57):
town's welfare her cause, and among her achievements were getting
the Guildhall restored in the nineteen fifties. It was a garage,
starting the town festival and funding the mental health hospital,
with all the royals taking the first subscription to causes.
She encouraged everyone wanted their name up there alongside the
royal names, as per the seat sponsor chart.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
Still in the Guildhall.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
There's a little bit more about Lynn which locals don't use.
The King's part in the name, and there's a shout
out to the Museum of Methodism and John Wesley's House
and grave in London. Since I have no pets to
pay pet tax with. I include some graves from Pickering

(36:44):
Church in Yorkshire, England. It was common on medieval tombs
to include faithful pets or lions at people's feet, as
well as some maybe turn of the last millennium gravestones,
all on display in a charming town church where I
spent Christmas. Keep up the amazing work. I've been listening
for years and the quality has remained constant. All the
best Thomas and yet so these are just an assortment

(37:06):
of grave sentence, which we have said. We love pictures
of all kinds of things. So I love this. Thank
you so much for this, and for sort of a
little behind the scenes about that possible Shakespeare floor. Holly
is still so obviously delighted by that whole thing. I am,
and I don't mean to like there's no condescension here.

(37:30):
I just think it's funny. It's like the funniest oddest thing.
It's like going, this is a famous man's shoelace.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
It's just an odd thing that still has historical significance.
But it's such you know, the things we would never
think about, you know, like when you're walking through your
house right now, you don't consider that like one day
someone will be like this child was late in nineteen
eighty five, Like it's just it's a funny thing. It's
the mundane stuff of life that becomes important in that

(38:00):
to me has its own comedy. Well, thank you again
for this email, which is from fully a month ago
and I.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
Have finally read. If you would like to send us
a note about this or any other podcasts or at
history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. We're on social media
various places at miss in History, including Facebook, Instagram, and
x is still a weird name to me to say,

(38:27):
And you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio
app and wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts.
Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}'Doctress' Rebecca Crumpler