Suffrage at MedChi

The Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland building (including Osler Hall), now known as MedChi, at 1211 Cathedral Street in Baltimore was last surveyed by the Maryland Historic Trust in 1975. That survey only included a description of the west façade. This report was completed in 2020 as part of a project to document sites associated with the Woman's Suffrage Movement in Maryland.

Undoubtedly, Marcia Crocker Noyes, the librarian at MedChi was interested in and involved with the suffrage movement. She was an independent, intelligent woman, who by the mid-1910s, owned and drove her own car, and ran a large organization on her own.

The quest for women's suffrage represents over 70 years of activism that ultimately resulted in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, on August 18, 1920. The movement relied on a complicated grassroots network of affiliated national, state, and local organizations that were often fraught with divisions over race, strategy, and tactics. These organizations were predominantly comprised of white upper- and middle-class women, although some efforts were made to engage poorer women. Black women were excluded, but formed their own segregated organizations, including the Progressive Women' s Suffrage Club established by Estelle Young, and advocated not only for women's suffrage but also for a host of other civil rights legislation. The movement was decidedly nonviolent and relied on the power of persuasion and education to attract people to the cause (Diehlmann* 2020).

Suffrage Meetings The Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland Building was the site of numerous meetings associated with women' s suffrage in the second decade of the twentieth century, perhaps because Elizabeth King Ellicott, a leading suffragist and president of the Equal Suffrage League (ESL), was married to William M. Ellicott whose firm designed the building. 

In addition, many leading suffragists were affiliated with Baltimore's medical community. A flurry of meetings were held in Osler Hall over winter 1910, likely to raise awareness for the controversial bill the ESL had before the Maryland General Assembly to allow for municipal suffrage in Baltimore. Judge Jacob Moses of the Juvenile Court, acting as council for the ESL, prepared the bill and Mr. Robert H. Carr agreed to further the amendment in the Legislature.

The first mass suffrage meeting hosted at Osler Hall by the ESL was on January 22, 1910, when Governor John F. Shafroth of Colorado spoke before a full house on women suffrage in Colorado since it was adopted 16 years prior. In introducing Gov. Shafroth, Gen. N. Winslow Willians, Maryland Secretary of State, noted "I think it is very appropriate that the meeting is held in this form where panaceas for all ills are discussed. You women are to cure the evils of a deficient suffrage" (The Sun, 1910b, 14).

Several days later, on January 26, 1910, Rev. Dr. Arma Howard Shaw, NAWSA president, spoke. Dr. Shaw's presence was important as she was a proponent of universal suffrage, as that was the official NAWSA platform, but she personally was supportive of municipal suffrage efforts like Ellicott's if that form of suffrage was deemed more expedient. Mrs. Ellicott presided at the meeting and Judge Moses introduced Dr. Shaw (The Sun, 1910d, 14; The Sun, 1910a, 9).

Then, on February 1, 1910, Miss Caroline Lexow, daughter of a former New York state senator and secretary of the National College Equal Suffrage League, spoke to a crowd in Osler Hall (The Sun, 1910e, 14). The last event was a lecture given by Mrs. Ellicott relating the suffrage movement to nurses during the Maryland State Association of Graduate Nurses' annual convention at MedChi on February 11, 1910 (The Sun, 1910f, 6).

Both Mrs. Ellicott and Mary E. Lent, president of the Just Government League (JGL) of Maryland, urged passage of the municipal suffrage bill. The event was clearly successful, as by the end of the evening 300 nurses signified their intention of backing the bill (The Sun, 1910g, 7). Ellicott' s bill was controversial because it competed with the Maryland Woman's Suffrage Association's (MWSA) own bill for statewide suffrage. The ESL bill would allow male or female residents of Baltimore City twenty-one years old or older to vote, but property and educational qualifications limited those who were actually enfranchised.

The ESL bill, which was accompanied by an endorsement by Baltimore City Mayor J. Barry Mahool and a petition with 173,000 signatures, was endorsed by the JGL and the Men's League for Woman Suffrage, and none of these organizations supported MWSA's statewide suffrage bill, believing that a municipal suffrage bill would be more palatable to the Maryland populace. The General Assembly was resoundingly un-supportive of both bills, postponing the municipal suffrage question indefinitely and defeating the statewide bill outright.

MWSA was already frustrated by the ESL's efforts to bypass MWSA structure and establish its own local and county leagues. The organization was further incensed at ESL's effort at establishing municipal suffrage, seeing it as divisive and unhelpful toward their larger statewide suffrage goals. Later that year, on November 29, 1910, MWSA held their annual state convention at the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty building, where the organization ejected the ESL, resulting in a loss of 600 members for MWSA. Montgomery County suffragists argued to keep the organization affiliated, fearing that Mrs. Ellicott would form a rival state organization as the ESL "has done considerable work in the counties and is well-known there" (The Sun, 1910c, 9).

Their concerns were not unwarranted as Ellicott did, in fact, create a new statewide suffrage organization, the State Equal Franchise League (EFL), leaving three statewide organizations vying for leadership of the suffrage movement. The rift appears to have been short-lived as a year later there was mention that a council may be established among the JGL, the EFL and the MWSA for the purpose of conducting the suffrage campaign harmoniously. Regardless, the three organizations remained independent and varied in their tactics, with the JGL being the most militant, MWSA as most conservative, and the EFL somewhere in between (The Sun, 1911c, 13; Son 1962, 40). MedChi was also the site of significant anti-suffrage activity. 

The Maryland Society Opposed to Woman Suffrage was organized at MedChi on February 20, 1911, under the slogan "Let women use their influence on the men to cast their ballots for clean government, and better results will be accomplished than by creating more votes" (The Sun, 1911e, 8). The organization hosted their first public meeting at MedChi on March 13, 1911.

According to newspaper accounts, "Osler Hall was thronged and an adjoining room was well filled" (The Sun, 1911f, 8). William Marbury, a noted Baltimore lawyer presided, and speakers included former US Supreme Court Justice Henry Billings Brown from Washington, DC, and Everett P. Wheeler of New York (The Sun, 1911h, 8). They hosted a second annual meeting at MedChi on Mach 4, 1912, to elect officers, including Mary Frick Garrett as president, who continued to serve in that role for many years (The Sun, 1912, 8). This was followed by a mass meeting on March 25, 1912, with Minnie Bronson of Washington, DC, and Emily Bissell of Wilmington, Delaware, where they pleaded for a larger membership (The Sun, 1912, 9).

Suffragists continued to use the facility in 1911. Dr. Arma Howard Show spoke on March 15, 1911, on "True Democracy" under the auspices of the ESL and was introduced by Dr. Eugene Nelson, president of Goucher College. Mrs. Ellicott opened the meeting, which was scheduled to offset the anti-suffrage meeting held two days earlier (The Sun, 1911d, 9). On March 28, 1911, Miss Sylvia Pankhurst gave an address before 75 people at Osler Hall under the auspices of the Baltimore Woman Suffrage Club and was the guest of Emma Maddox Funck. Ms. Pankhurst was from a family of notable English suffragists, including her mother, Emmaline, and her sister, Christabel, a lawyer who defended many suffragists who were imprisoned (The Sun, 1911a, 11).

She implored the audience of mostly young women, "We should always attack the party in power.... As long as it is in power and we have not the ballot it is our enemy" (The Sun, 1911b, 16). The JGL sponsored a mass meeting open to the public at MedChi on December 7, 1911, where Miss Beatrice Forbes-Robertson of New Yok spoke (The Sun, 1911c, 13). The JGL formed a chorus that would perform that evening, including "the Women's Marching Song," which was the battle hymn the English suffragists sang as they stormed Parliament. Before the meeting, the JGL held three open air meetings to raise awareness of the event, the first on November 29, 1911, on the Courthouse Plaza (The Sun, 1911i, 7).

The mass meeting was very successful as the JGL raised more than $2,000 that would be used in the league’s suffrage campaign. Suffrage activities continued at MedChi and Osler Hall in the following years. A second JGL mass meeting was held on January 11, 1912, with Mr. Roben Elder, assistant District Attorney of New York City (The Sun, 1911j, 13). The ESL sponsored a talk from Miss Ethel Amold of England on "The Citizenship of Women" on February 27, 1912 (The Sun, 1912a, 9). When the Army of the Hudson, a national suffrage march from New York to Washington, DC, was in Baltimore, members attended a Mental Hygiene Congress at MedChi on February 24, 1913; however, it is unclear if march leader Rosalie Jones attended (The Sun, 1913, 12). 

*This report was written by Nicole Diehlmann. She is a historian in Maryland who worked for the Maryland Historic Trust and the engineering firm, RKK.