A few weeks ago, I gave a lecture on the two Mary Garretts. One was Mary Garrett by birth and one by marriage. They were polar opposites in many ways, but the intersected through medicine. Here's the story, complete with my slides to illustrate:
Once upon a time in
Baltimore, lived two women named Mary Garrett. One was named that by birth and
the other by marriage. Both had more money than they could ever spend, and for
both of them, that money came from the founding family of the B&O Railroad,
the Garretts. Both are credited with being philanthropic, but in two different
ways.
Baltimore, and Maryland
are littered with buildings, streets, and locations named after the family,
think Garrett County in Western Maryland.
But
first, let’s look at the back story!
John Work Garrett
was born in Baltimore, Maryland on 31 July 1820. At the age of 16, he became an
associate in his father's business, Robert Garrett & Sons, and at 19 he
became a clerk in the firm. In 1855, he was elected to the Board of Directors
for the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad. Three years later, on November
17, 1858, he was elected President of the B&O Railroad - a position he held
for 26 years.
John Garrett and the
B&O Railroad played a key role in helping to preserve the Union during the
Civil War. The nation's first railroad assumed the important role of
transporting soldiers, equipment, supplies, and wounded. The Civil War was the
first war in which railroads were used extensively. At the outbreak of the war,
the B&O became the nation's most important railroad because it linked
Washington, D.C., to the rest of the Union, and allowed soldiers to move quickly
into Virginia, as well as Confederate territory to the west.
Although Garrett
sympathized with the southern cause, his business allegiance was to the Union.
While neither a soldier nor a politician, his counsel was highly respected and
trusted. He was frequently called to Washington, D.C., for advice on
transportation affairs. Throughout the war, Garrett could be found either in
Baltimore (Camden Station where Camden Yards is now located) where he received
reports and issued orders for movement of trains, or along the B&O rail
lines trying to maintain the morale of his men.
John Work Garrett married
Rachel Ann Harrisson (1823–1883), and the couple had four children, Robert,
Henry, John, and Mary, who was the youngest and only girl.
Garrett
began purchasing B&O Railroad stock early, when the railroad was competing
with the newly completed Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which paralleled
the Potomac River from Georgetown to Cumberland and the National
Road.
Following
a motion by board member Johns Hopkins (1795-1873), the largest
stockholder since 1847 as well as chairman of the financial committee, John
Garrett became the B&O's new president. Hopkins, a Maryland native, had
made his substantial fortune in Baltimore. The Garrett Company as well as the
B&O had strong ties to the London-based George Peabody & Company,
and through their business interests, financier George
Peabody (1795–1869).
At Johns
Hopkins' request, Garrett arranged a dinner meeting with Peabody and Hopkins,
and the very next day Hopkins announced his intention to establish a hospital
and university. While this story is uncorroborated, Peabody likely did
influence Hopkins in deciding what to do with his wealth.
John Work Garrett's
daughter, Mary Elizabeth Garrett (1854–1915), a civic activist, philanthropist
in her own right and suffragist, helped fund the Bryn Mawr School,
the Baltimore Museum of Art (1914), and secured the admission of
women to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine as a condition of her bequest to
supplement the endowment of Hopkins' from twenty years before. Thus, the new
Hopkins medical college became one of the nation's first co-educational schools
in 1893.
Mary’s
education was rather peripatetic. She attended the private Miss Kummer’s School
in Mount Vernon, beginning at age twelve. While there, she met two girls who
would become her lifelong friends: Julia Rebecca Rogers, aka Dolly, and
Elizabeth King, aka Bessie. All three girls were from wealthy families, and
after Dolly’s father died, she became a ward of John Garrett.
While
Mary initially liked school, she soon became bored with the school’s philosophy
of “cultivation not college.” Girls were not allowed to study science, so
Dolly, Bessie, and Mary formed a study group, and to the shock of everyone,
dissected a rat!
Disappointed
with the lackluster experiences of school education, Mary quit school at age
seventeen and never returned to school. She was self-taught in literary
classics, and spoke fluent Italian and French and practiced German and Greek.
John
Garrett always said of Mary, that she was his child who had the best business
brain, and he wished she had been a boy. But at the time, women didn’t go into
business settings, especially one as powerful as the B&O Railroad. However,
he did allow her to attend business meetings with him, and she later became his
personal secretary and had the opportunity to meet many of the business titans
of the time.
Adolescence
was not a period of comfort and happiness for Garrett. She felt uncomfortable
with the Victorian expectations of women at the time and was also uncomfortable
with the attitude towards sex in her family. Every family member avoided
sex-related topics on purpose, and she had to teach herself about puberty.
Garrett
showed interests in business and managed her personal financial matters by
herself during this time period. Given a weekly allowance of five to ten
dollars per week, she kept record of all expenses in her notebook. Besides, she
kept all the letters from her relatives and friends, including Julia and
Elizabeth.
Garrett
also kept a diary, which was given to her by the philanthropist and longtime
friend of the Garret family, George Peabody, the respectable founder of
the Peabody Institute and the George Peabody
Library in Baltimore.
After
leaving school, she continued to learn from her father about commerce and the
operation of a railroad company, later serving as his secretary. John Garrett
also taught his daughter by example in his philanthropy. Garrett’s giving was
influenced by his friend George Peabody, and he maintained close ties with
Johns Hopkins, serving as a trustee of both Hopkins’s university and hospital.
Interestingly,
Mary never continued her education, blaming herself for her difficulties in
academic achievement which she thought could be linked to medical problems with
her uterus. Others attributed her health problems to Garrett’s stifling,
conservative world in which her father prohibited her from pursuing marriage,
college or a career, as the cause of her mental collapse, or ‘neurasthenia’ in
Victorian terms, at the age of 25.
When she inherited nearly $2 million upon her father’s death, Mary
Garrett would employ the lessons she gleaned from the example of her father and
his friends and
become a philanthropist in her own right.
Mary Garrett relied
heavily on her intimate circle of friends, known as the “Friday Evening.” The
intellectually curious group included M. Carey Thomas, Mamie Gwinn, Elizabeth
“Bessie” King, and Julia Rogers—all but one of them daughters of trustees of Johns
Hopkins University, the hospital, or both. It was with this group that Garrett
collaborated on her two key philanthropic achievements: the Bryn Mawr School
and Johns Hopkins Medical School.
The Bryn Mawr School was
Garrett’s first philanthropic undertaking. The Friday Evening group was
appalled by the lack of a serious college preparatory school for girls in
Baltimore. Garrett’s inheritance provided the means to remedy the situation.
They decided to act.
They
named the new preparatory school for Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia, after
acquiring the school’s permission to do so. (They also maintained close ties to
the college, and Bryn Mawr school students were required to pass the college
entrance examination in order to graduate.)
Garrett
not only provided the necessary funds to establish and build the school, she
also closely oversaw the project. Her hands-on involvement extended to the
selection of gym equipment and artwork for the school, which was located but a
few blocks from Garrett’s home in Baltimore on Cathedral and Preston Streets.
The Friday Evening served as the governing body of the school. Garrett was its
president.
Garrett and the Friday
Evening Group then set their sights higher—the education of women at Johns
Hopkins University. Garrett first attempted to open the doors of Johns Hopkins
to women in 1887 by offering the university $35,000 to establish a
coeducational school of science. The university president and trustees rejected
her offer.
Just a
few years later, however, Johns Hopkins found itself on unsure financial
footing. The opening of the medical school had been delayed due to insufficient
funds. The Friday Evening saw an opportunity.
Garrett
enlisted her friends and sought support from other influential women around the
country (including Mrs. J. Pierpont Morgan, Mrs. Leland Stanford, and
First Lady Mrs. Benjamin Harrison) to raise funds to approach the university
with a new offer. Garrett offered the trustees $100,000 (half of which she
contributed personally) to pay for the opening of the medical school on one
condition: that men and women would be admitted on equal standing. The board
accepted the offer, but then told the group that the school could not open with less
than $500,000.
When the
university and the newly formed Women’s Medical Fund Committee struggled to
approach this number, Garrett stepped in and covered the difference with
$307,000. But her additional funding came with additional conditions. These new
conditions required that the medical school be a full graduate school leading
to a medical degree and that all applicants be required to have a bachelor’s
degree in the field of science (neither of these stipulations were normal to
medical schools in the country at the time).
Garrett’s
funding and her clearly outlined conditions not only opened medical education
to America’s women, they also turned Johns Hopkins into the first modern
medical school in the United States. In his history of the school, Alan Chesney
concludes: “To this lady, more than any other single person, save only Johns
Hopkins himself, does the School of Medicine owe its being.”
Throughout
the rest of her life, Garrett would continue to use her wealth and influence to
promote women’s education and opportunity. She gave generously to Bryn Mawr
College and later became a major funder of the cause of women’s suffrage. Her
final years were spent at Bryn Mawr with her close friend M. Carey Thomas, who
was president of the college, to whom Garrett left her fortune upon her death
in 1915.
Thomas
and Garrett lived for many years together at the Deanery which Garrett lavishly
decorated with works of original art and fine furniture. The Deanery was, as
well as a private residence for Thomas and Garrett (and Mamie Gwinn before
her), a formal entertainment space used for faculty parties, dinners for
visiting speakers and for student teas and other entertainments included both
Garrett and Thomas’ names on the printed invite).
For her
bargain with the Johns Hopkins medical school, Garrett is sometimes called
America’s greatest “coercive philanthropist.” William Osler, one of the
school’s four founding physicians, famously replied: “It was a pleasure to be
bought.”
While Osler
appreciated Mary Elizabeth Garrett for spearheading the Women's Medical School
Fund and also for conceiving and funding John Singer Sargent's portrait, The
Four Doctors (1905), he was very close to her sister-in-law, Mary
Sloan Frick Garrett, later Jacobs.
Mary apparently did not warm to Osler as much
as she did to the other portrait-sitters: the pathologist William Henry Welch,
the gynecologist Howard Atwood Kelly, and the surgeon William Stewart Halsted,
who was her close personal friend and also one of her physicians. John Singer Sargent also painted a portrait of Mary Elizabeth Garrett which hangs in the William Welch Building at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
After
Mary Elizabeth Garrett died, Jacobs joined a lawsuit brought by his wife and
other Garrett family members against M. Carey Thomas, Mary Elizabeth Garrett's
longtime partner to whom she left most of her estate. They ultimately lost. Whether
the Oslers would have been close to Mary Elizabeth Garrett had it not been for
the feud among the siblings is, of course, speculative.
Thomas
and Garrett shared much in their ambitions for women in their contemporary
society and worked closely on issues such as suffrage and access to higher
education. Their letters reveal their
shared aims, their intellectual exchanges, joint passions for art, literature,
poetry and engagement with prominent scholars of their time, and their very
different personalities that somehow seemed to work together in creating
partnership, friendship and intimacy that lasted over four decades.
Mary
Sloan Frick Garrett Jacobs
Mary
Sloan was the daughter of William Frederick Frick, who was born in Baltimore in
1817 to William and Mary Sloan Frick. He was educated at Baltimore City College
and graduated from Harvard in 1835, at a very young age. He was admitted to the
bar in 1839. He lectured on matters of science and public interest, but was not
a physician like his brother, Charles Frick.
Frick
took especial interest in the public school system of the day and as President
of the School Board contributed a great deal to support educational progress.
As a lawyer it has been said of him that he was one whom any colleague might
envy, and any adversary might fear. He later became a judge of the Superior
Court of Baltimore. He was also a significant supporter of MedChi.
Mary
Sloan Frick was born in 1847, was privately educated by governesses and tutors
and was not permitted to leave home without the accompaniment of a tutor or
family member.
The
Fricks employed tutors and a governess to educate Mary and her sister in music,
art, literature, and handiwork. Social graces were emphasized: inviting guests
to tea was a treasured tradition. Out of affection and respect for her parents,
Mary modeled her values on theirs—values that she held her entire life.
In 1872,
Mary wed Robert Garrett, the oldest son of John W. Garrett, who was president
of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and Robert Garrett & Sons Bank.
After his
father’s death in 1884, Robert was elected president of the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad. He endeared himself to the employees (unlike his father, who had
exploited them), and did much for his city. But by the mid-1890s the second
Robert Garrett was a sick man, apparently from kidney disease. In 1886, his
physician advised an extended trip. Garrett went west with a group of friends
in private rail cars. Reaching San Francisco, he decided to extend the trip
around the world, for which he needed a personal physician.
Enter
Henry Barton Jacobs. He received his B.A. in 1883 and his M.D. in 1887, both
from Harvard University. In 1897, after the entourage returned to
Baltimore from their world tour, Jacobs chose to stay on and moved in with the
Garretts. It was the ultimate concierge practice—a single, ultra-rich
patient—but not an easy one, as Garrett by then had mental as well as physical
illness.
While
abroad on a trip planned to ease his nerves, his tenuous health was further
hampered by the unexpected death of his beloved brother, Thomas Harrison, in a
yachting accident. Garrett lived eight years in a state of precarious health
before dying in 1896.
After
Garrett died in 1896, Jacobs, who had become especially interested in
tuberculosis, became more closely associated with the Johns Hopkins Hospital
and its medical school. He actively participated in organizations directed
toward the treatment and eradication of tuberculosis. In 1911, Jacobs was
elected a trustee of The Johns Hopkins Hospital, a position he held until his
death.
Jacobs quietly
married Mary Frick Garrett in 1902. Together, they cultivated interests in the
fine arts and the history of medicine. In 1932, he donated his collection of
medical books, medallions, and engravings to the Johns Hopkins University’s
Institute of the History of Medicine. He also provided funding for a room to
house the collection.
A
connoisseur of fine art and architecture, Mary Frick Garrett Jacobs built a
major collection of European painting and sculpture which she housed in a
sumptuous mansion on Mount Vernon Place in Baltimore. There she entertained
lavishly, becoming the leading arbiter of Baltimore society.
Mary
Sloan was known as “the Mrs. Astor of Baltimore's 400,” the ultimate social
arbiter. To have her bow to one at the opera, at the races, or at any other
social event was to have one's social position acknowledged; to have her show
up at a party for even a few minutes declared the evening a success; and to be
invited to her home proved that one had “arrived.” She epitomized the excesses
of America's Gilded Age.
At this
time, both the pro- and anti-vote women were meeting at Osler Hall at the
Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland. The two groups agreed not to
bother each other and their meetings. One man was caught in the middle of the
two Marys.
Dr. William Osler was very close friends with Mary Garrett Jacobs
and Dr. Henry Barton Jacobs. But he was also the Chief of Medicine at Johns
Hopkins, and had been with the Hospital since it opened. Mrs. Jacobs considered
the Oslers one of the few people who were her peers in Baltimore. Neither
Osler nor his wife became close to Mary Elizabeth Garrett, who was the second
Robert Garrett's younger sister and therefore Mary Frick Jacobs's
sister-in-law. They could not have been more different. Not surprisingly, she
clashed frequently with her more socially progressive sister-in-law Mary
Elizabeth Garrett and publicly opposed her notable causes. Her sister-in-law
did all she could to dissuade her wealthy friends from contributing to the
Women's Medical School Fund, and she later served as president of the Baltimore
chapter of the Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, thus countering another
cause célèbre of Mary Elizabeth Garrett. Despite her strong opposition to
coeducation and women’s suffrage, she supported many worthy charitable causes during
her lifetime.
But Mary
was not without a philanthropic spirit. To honor her first husband, she
established the Robert Garrett Hospital for Children on North Carey Street, as
well as a training school for nurses attached to the hospital. She provided
funding for the children to recuperate in Mount Airy, Maryland, during the
summer months and for the cost of the railway fares for mothers to visit their
children whenever they wished.
Mary’s
home in Baltimore City is now known as the Garrett-Jacobs Mansion, home to the
Engineers Club, named for the men who re-built Baltimore after the Great Fire
of 1904. The home was
inspired by those on the Champs del Elysees in Paris, Garrett wanted a similar
park in front of his own home. Henri Cremier designed the fountain that graces
that space.
Robert
and Mary Garrett hired Gilded Age architect Stanford White of
architectural firm McKim, Mead and White to help them realize their vision of a
beautiful home that would compare with other Gilded Age homes in Boston, New
York, and Philadelphia. The renovations would continue for thirty-two years
until the house included over forty rooms, sixteen fireplaces, and one hundred
windows.
Given her
demands, Stanford White initiated several extraordinarily beautiful details
including the spiral staircase, the entrance fireplace with inglenooks, and the
hanging Venetian lamp. He also designed the family dining room in Renaissance
style, featuring tapestries on the walls, elaborately carved cabinets, painted
black to suggest ebony. All of the downstairs rooms opened onto a courtyard of
exotic plants, a parrot, and a monkey.
After
Mary’s marriage to Dr. Jacobs, they enlarged the house by purchasing the
adjacent townhouse. It was “renovated” by John Russell Pope, who would later design the
Baltimore Museum of Art which housed much of Mary’s art collection.
Her
Newport home was the lost Whiteholme estate. Completed in 1903, for Mrs Mary
Sloan (Frick) Garrett, the widow of Robert Garrett.
Having stood at the corner of Narragansett and Ochre Point Avenue, Whiteholme
was among Newport's most impressive French Neo-Baroque mansions put up during
the Gilded Age.
A third
house, Uplands, located west of Baltimore City in what would have been the
county, was a forty-two-room Victorian mansion. The property formerly belonged
to General John Swan, Mary Jacobs' great-grandfather, as a part of his larger
Hunting Ridge estate. Mary Frick and her husband Robert stayed at the house on
Mount Vernon Place between November and Easter then returned to Uplands every
spring. In 1885, they hired E. Francis Baldwin, architect for the B&O
Railroad, to renovate the property. Mary continued to use the property as a
resident up until her death in 1936 when she left the building to the Episcopal
Church.
The
prenuptial contract specified that neither husband nor wife could lay claim to
the other's property and that each could dispose of their properties as they
saw fit. Despite, or perhaps because of, this stipulation, it was reported in a
gossip column that “Dr. Henry Barton Jacobs is the most devoted husband in
Newport. He seems unable to do enough for his wife, and waits on her hand and
foot.”
Dr. and Mrs. Jacobs travelled extensively for the next few decades, taking ocean liners to Europe, crossing the United States in private train cars, entertaining, collecting art (her) and historic medical books (him), until they began slowing down.
Mary Sloan Frick Garrett Jacobs died in 1936, and Dr. Henry Barton Jacobs died in 1939. They are buried next to each other in Baltimore's elegant Greenmount Cemetery.
Their house on Mount Vernon Place went through several owners, including a funeral home and the Masons, until a plan was hatched to knock it down and make it a parking lot! Luckily, wiser heads prevailed and it was acquired by the Engineers Club, remnants of the men who had re-built Baltimore after the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904.
