Alice Fitzgerald

Alice Louise Florence Fitzgerald (March 13, 1875 — November 10, 1962) was an American nurse who served in Europe during and after World War I. She earned a Florence Nightingale Medal from the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1927, for her achievements.

Alice Fitzgerald
Alice Fitzgerald in uniform, from a 1920 publication.
Born
Alice Louise Florence Fitzgerald

(1875-03-13)March 13, 1875
Florence, Italy
DiedNovember 10, 1962(1962-11-10) (aged 87)
New York City
CitizenshipAmerican
EducationJohns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing
Occupationregistered nurse
Years active1908-1948
Known forLeadership in nursing, in Europe during and after World War I, and in Asia in the 1920s

Early life

On March 13, 1875, Fitzgerald was born as Alice Louise Florence Fitzgerald in Florence, Italy. Fitzgerald's American parents were Charles H. Fitzgerald and Alice Riggs Lawrdson, both from Baltimore.[1]

Education

Fitzgerald studied in Europe before attending Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, graduating in the class of 1906.[2] The several languages she learned in a European childhood would prove useful in her adult work. Fitzgerald was fluent in English, French, German, and Italian. [1][3]

Career

Fitzgerald returned to Italy in 1908 to assist the Italian Red Cross in the aftermath of an earthquake in Messina, volunteer work for which she received the Italian Red Cross Disaster Relief Medal.[1][4] She was head nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1909 to 1910, at Bellevue Hospital from 1910 to 1912, with further supervisory posts in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Indianapolis, and Wellesley, Massachusetts.[2][5][6]

During World War I, she was named the first "Edith Cavell Memorial nurse" from Massachusetts, funded to work with the British Queen Alexandra Imperial Military Nursing Service at Boulogne and Méaulte from 1916 to 1917, and then with the American Red Cross. Outside France, she served at a refugee hospital in Rimini. Her postwar work included organizing nursing schools, recruiting bilingual nurses, serving as Chief Nurse of the American Red Cross in Europe,[7][8] and as Director of the Nursing Bureau of the League of Red Cross Societies in Geneva.[5][9] She founded the International School for Public Health Nurses.[2] [10] For her efforts, Fitzgerald was awarded medals and honors by Great Britain (Royal Red Cross second class),[11] France (Medaille d'honneur and other decorations), Italy, Poland, Serbia, Hungary, and Russia.[12][13]

She worked in Asia in the 1920s, advising the Governor General of the Philippines on public health nursing, and founding a nursing program at Baguio.[1][14][15] She did further earthquake relief in Japan after the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. She started a nursing school in Bangkok in 1924, and studied nursing programs in Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, and China.[2] In 1927, she was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal by the International Committee of the Red Cross.[16]

Back in the United States, she was director of nurses at Polyclinic Hospital in New York (from 1930 to 1936), and a housemother at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in the 1940s.[2][17]

Fitzgerald retired in 1948.

Personal life

Fitzgerald died in 1962, at Peabody Nursing Home in New York City, New York. Fitzgerald was 87 years old. [2]

Legacy

Fitzgerald's papers, including diaries, photographs, and medals, are archived at Johns Hopkins,[2] with another collection of her papers, including an unpublished memoir, at the Maryland Historical Society.[12] A biography for young readers, Nurse Around the World: Alice Fitzgerald by Iris Noble, was published in 1967.[18]

Awards and decorations

References
  1. Shor, Elizabeth Noble. "Alice Fitzgerald (13 March 1875 - 10 November 1962)". American National Biography. Retrieved January 13, 2019.
  2. Alice Fitzgerald Collection, in the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.
  3. "This Way Forward: Alice Fitzgerald (1876-1962)" Johns Hopkins Nursing (July 28, 2014).
  4. Anna La Torre, "The 1908 Italian Earthquake" in Arlene Wynbeek Keeling, Barbra Mann Wall, eds. Nurses and Disasters: Global, Historical Case Studies (Springer Publishing 2015): 49-53. ISBN 9780826126726
  5. American National Red Cross, History of American Red Cross Nursing (Macmillan 1922): 583-595; 1082-1084.
  6. "Former Indianapolis Nurse Will Enter English Service" Indianapolis Medical Journal (March 15, 1916): 105-106.
  7. "The Balkan Commission" American Journal of Nursing 20(1920): 136.
  8. "Chief Nurse of Red Cross League" Red Cross Bulletin (October 20, 1919): 7.
  9. "Alice Fitzgerald Given an Important Position" American Journal of Nursing 20(1920): 181-182.
  10. "Miss Fitzgerald Will Go to the Philippines" Pacific Coast Journal of Nursing (April 1922): 228-229.
  11. "American Nurse Honored by Red Cross" Modern Hospital (January 1920): 56.
  12. Christine E. Hallett, Nurse Writers of the Great War (Oxford University Press 2016): notes 14 and 15. ISBN 9781784996321
  13. "Miss Alice Fitzgerald, of the League of Red Cross Societies" Public Health Nursing (August 1920): 573-574.
  14. B. L. Brush, "Conflicting agendas: Alice Fitzgerald and Philippine public health nursing" Nursing Research 44(3)(May-June 1995): 190-191.
  15. Stephanie S. Bator, "The Rockefeller Foundation and the Philippine Islands, 1913-1935" Archived 2016-02-28 at the Wayback Machine (2010), report to the Rockefeller Archive Center.
  16. "The Florence Nightingale Medal" American Journal of Nursing (September 1949): 580. DOI: 10.2307/3458447
  17. B. B. Scher, "Alice and her wonderlands: Alice Fitzgerald pioneered in nursing wherever the world offered an opportunity" American Journal of Nursing 61(June 1961): 74-76.
  18. Iris Noble, Nurse Around the World: Alice Fitzgerald (Julian Messner 1967).
  19. Women's Overseas Service League (1923). Carry on, Volumes 2-6. The League. pp. 17–18.
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