Anna Louise Tittman Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Anna Tittm
Q. How did you get your tuition mney for Columbia?
A. I saved it. I worked at my private duty and got w mcp?ey,
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and 1 :
it. At that I couldnt t go until--I graduated in 1906-1 &It go mi
1921. And of course, I was in Siberia and so forth, and was using rr#
tim that way.
Q. We havenlt gotten to Siberia yet.
A. No.
Q. Well, you go on. Take it the way you want to tell it,;thatfs fipe with
me.
A. Then 1911, we'll have to say 1912 to 1914 is when I a d the school nursing.
I organized the program and worked alone. J
1
Q. Where was this?
I
A. In Springfield, Illinois, horn town. The superint ndent of the schools
was the superintendent when I was a little child. He was there in his position
a long time. He was Mr. J. H. Collins.
t
Q. Were you the first school nurse? I
A. Yes, I was the Mrst school nurse. There were no proparns murid anywhere
where I could observe. So after one of rr~y sumners Jn the Boston Floating
Hospital, I went down to New York City because I hew the Bellevue Hospital
area. We never got that postgraduate course in; that was in pediatrics,
too. I don't how, shall I go on with that? It was in aildren. I had
older children and the little ones. The babies, tiny babtes, were fed breast
milk. And on the Boston Floatbg Hospital, we had a pubuc health nurse who
collected mother's rriLlk for certain babies that had to have it. And in the
Bellevue Hospital, they had a whole series of womn who hpd kiad babies, and
well, a good lrany of them were colored. They had eno@ Wlk to fwd their
own and others if their own were partly on famula beca they nee4ed the
mney. Certain sick babies would nurse these feeders, T t e a pup of them.
Q. They didn't pump the milk from the mther then. She actually breast
fed them?
A. Well, they had to for the woman wouldn't how who-+ , it was breast
fed at Bellevue Hospital.
I
i
Q. Would
babies?
these women cert aln feed their
A. Well, they just had to take the baby that was handed to them, you know.
It wouldn't be always the sam baby everytime. But two ttle incidents or
mybe mre occmd.
We had a boy about ei&t years old on the childrents ward under care in
a pat big section of the ward. The wards were just tmmndous in size,
k