“We washed the men and the floors.” (Women’s Welfare Work in WWI, Part 1)

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PBBH_NESurgDressings_1918_001a-1024x602 — *Surgical Dressings Committee Volunteers in the Zander Ward of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital; Image Credit: Center for the History of Medicine at Countway Library*

“Their house had been destroyed and they had lost all their farm possessions but one cow. They were living in one side of a dirt-floored barn that belonged to some friend, and someone else had given them a bed. But why this family was living at all, I do not know. They had rushed away ahead of the Germans with one hundred and eighty Belgian soldiers at the time of the retreat toward Antwerp, and of the one hundred and eighty soldiers only twenty got out alive. Yet this family had come out intact, and survived typhoid fever after that. There were tears in the eyes of that mother — almost the only weeping we saw in Belgium.”

–Dr. Caroline Hedger, Chicago Women’s Club

Thousands of American women crossed the Atlantic Ocean to be of service to the soldiers and civilians suffering through World War I. Countless more served from their kitchens and communities in the United States. In this first episode of a three-part series on women’s relief work, we will learn about some of the great contributions made by Americans–especially women–before the US declared war on Germany.

Recommended Reading:

America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, Gail Collins

Credits for Primary Sources:

Diary of Mary Paxton Keeley, read with permission from the State Historical Society of Missouri

War bread; a Personal Narrative of the War and relief in Belgium, Edward Eyre Hunt

The overseas war record of the Winsor school, 1914-1919

Into the Breach, American Women Overseas in World War I, Dorothy and Carl Schneider

American Epistles

... the story of our country, one letter at a time.

“We washed the men and the floors.” (Women’s Welfare Work in WWI, Part 1)