I had the opportunity to speak with a group from the University of Baltimore on the topic of Women, Employment & Adversity. As my subject, I chose Marcia Noyes.
Marcia Crocker Noyes was the librarian here at MedChi. She arrived
in Baltimore for a short visit in 1896, after graduating from Hunter College in New
York, and on a visit to her sister who worked at the Pratt Library.
She decided to stay for a while to live with her sister, who found her a job at the Pratt. Marcia worked cataloging books and caught the attention
of the head of the Pratt, who recommended her to his friend, Dr. William Osler, who was looking to hire a librarian.
Dr. Osler was a charismatic physician but he could be very
intimidating on first glance. He had arrived in Baltimore in 1888 to help
establish the medical school at Johns Hopkins and in 1896, was the President of the
Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland.
Marcia was 27 years old, and although she knew libraries, she had
no background in medicine. But she was willing to learn, and to move into the
building where the Faculty was located, just a few blocks from here. Her job as
the librarian required her to be on call 24/7.
A physician could call at any hour of the day or night and request
a book. Perhaps his patient’s eye had fallen out, and he needed to understand
how to put it back in. He would call* Marcia and request the book, she would go
into the library and find it. Soon after, the physician would arrive, read
through the book and be on his way. She was our early version of Google.
Soon after Marcia started work as the librarian, her duties began
to expand. This was mainly because she was the type of person who would see
something that needed to be done, and then she’d do it. Her role gradually
became what she wanted it to become.
Miss
Noyes had a lot to overcome to be successful at her position. While she had Dr.
Osler in her corner, she was a young woman with no medical background. Close to
100% of the members of the Faculty were men, and older, well-educated ones at
that. Some of the physicians, especially
the elder ones, viewed her with disdain. But she was a quick learner, and
attended nearly every one of the Faculty’s events, learning the names of the
members, and asking the wealthier ones for their financial assistance.
In
1904, when the Faculty re-organized to fit in with the American Medical
Association’s guidelines for medical societies, Marcia became the Executive Secretary.
And she basically did all of this by herself. She had one helper, a man from
Haiti who was called Mr. Caution, and he was the custodian/porter/man of all
trades. She also was able to hire two of her friends at the grand sum of $.25
per hour to help in the evenings. Her salary was $200/year, but she also lived in an apartment on the premises.
She
was in charge of every aspect of the organization, in addition to her other outside activities. For example, along with Dr. Osler and two other
librarians, she founded the Medical Library Association in 1898. This
organization is still vibrant and active today, and its highest award is named
after Marcia. In addition, she took off for the summers, something which was
common at the time, and ran a summer camp for girls in the Adirondack Mountains
in upstate New York.
Of
course, you might ask how she got there, and the answer is by car! By the mid
1910’s, Marcia had purchased a little car, called a Doctor’s Coupe.
Driving
licenses were only introduced in 1910, but women were in the vast minority at
that time. They didn’t even get to vote until 1920! In the pictures of her car,
Marcia calls her the Gray Lady and explains that her initials are on the door.
In
1909, it became apparent that the Faculty had outgrown their building and
Marcia was tasked with being basically the project manager for the new
building, where we are now. This was very unusual for a woman, and there are
contemporaneous notes that indicate that she was working with the architects on
the building’s design. And since she would be living here, she wanted her
apartment to be exactly the way she wanted it.
The
building was completed in less than a year, and Marcia’s close friend, Dr.
William Osler, who was now living in England and had been knighted by the King,
came back to Baltimore to help dedicate it and attend a whirl of parties. Over
the next ten years, she traveled on an ocean liner to visit Sir William and his
wife, Lady Grace Osler in Oxford, several times.
Over
the next years, Marcia continued to grow and expand the membership at the
Faculty. She worked with members on numerous initiatives including persuading
the legislature to adopt a state-wide medical examiner’s office, rather than
the more common county coroner one. She helped facilitate the quarterly House
of Delegates meetings held in the far reaches of the state. She solicited
donations from members and used them to buy more books for the library, which
at its peak, numbered more than 65,000 books. Marcia also created a museum at
the Faculty building, securing donations of antique and rare medical
instruments, as well as a number of the valuable paintings which are now in our
collection.
Marcia
was beloved by everyone who worked for her. She was unassuming and
light-hearted, and gave her assistants the credit when things went right and
took the blame when they went wrong. When she retired, the newest employee had
been working for her for 14 years, and Mr. Caution whom she hired upon her
arrival in 1896, outlasted her at the Faculty by three years.
For
the first decades of its existence, the library had led an uncertain life, closing for months at a time, having only outdated and mildewed books, and
keeping the books in a complete disorder. By the time she retired after 50
years, there was more than $90,000 in the bank, and the medical library was one
of the best in the country. It held the medical journals from every state and
every year, as well as numerous rare and valuable books.
In
1934, Marcia was elected as the first non-medical president of the Medical
Library Association. For many years, she had organized their book exchange
program, as well as editing their quarterly journal.
When
Marcia retired in 1946, she planned to write the history of the Medical Library
Association but she was in ill-health and was not able to. The members planned
a big party for her retirement in November, but when her health continued to
decline, they moved it forward to April.
We
do not know the date on which Marcia was born, probably sometime in December of
1869, but we do know that she died on November 27, 1946. She wanted to have her
funeral at home. Here at the Faculty, which was literally, her home. So, for
the first time in its 116 year history, a funeral was held at the Faculty for
its beloved Marcia Crocker Noyes.
At
her funeral, one of her close friends, the physician Dr. J. Albert Chatard said
of her…
Miss Noyes created a created a reality of the
hopes and dreams Dr.
Osler formulated while he was at Hopkins… On this foundation, she worked
constantly to create an atmosphere both effective and genial, so that people
would like to come to the building… and would feel that interesting and
important things were going on under its roof.
