Anna Louise Tittman Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Anna Tittman
Q. At St. John1 s Hospital?
A. At St. John's.
Q. Which class would yows have been? The fifth or the qi&th or the
tenth. HaM you any idea? How many years had the school of nursing been
in existance at Springfield Hospital?
A. It staoted in &-the fint class was in 1904 and I tlpnk they entered
the-wait a ndnute . No, that s not quite riat. I could call up and find
out. I think the first class was 1902, and they had been in existence two
years. Miss Kathryn Matthews who was so pmixinent here a nurse, and a
dear, she was In that first class.
Q. So yours wouldn't been about the . . .
A. And mine was 1906.
Q. About the fourth class then? 1
A. I entered Fn 1904, when I graduated f'mm high school. So I thW that
is all I can tell about the legislation because I was away most of the time
one place and another. I lived in New York, you know, eiateen yeam. But
a person who was very active in nursing legislation was Mi$s Alice Dalbey,
Presbyterian Church, she was a First Presbykerian Church mpmber-. In fact,
she had attended our little law school here after she was nurse. &e
took care of William Flidgely who was elderly. He could sit on his Fifth
Street window-apartmnt on Fifth Street between Capitol y d Monme an the
west side of the street-and see the Ridgely National Bank/ And that was
his main interest in life, you see, because he was not ablQ to function there.
And Mss Dalbey was his nurse. The law school was ri&t n xt door in a
building. The building I think was as close as that. f
Q. Next door to the bank was this?
I
A. No. \
Q. Or to his apartmnt?
A. It was End of a gathedng place for som of the nurse
always welcom to stop in, you know.
Q. Now is this at Mr. Ridgelyls horn?
I
A. Yes, and he had a colored man take care of him, too.
would occasionally get away to go to a mtional conventi
time we went to a convention, we got held up. We were
didn't get back to our train at Cincinnati. We got off,
some postcwds or something, than we got as far as Pitt
tion was in Philadelphia. So we had to pt the rest of t
morning we were on another train and we were way back.
tame to walk beside this long brain, md we were afraid
mLss everything. ht Miss Dalbqy said, 'Now wetre not
Mdgely about this.