The Two Mary Garretts and Medicine

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.^[1]

Garrett showed interests in business and managed her personal business 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.

Mary Garrett would employ the lessons she gleaned from the example of her father and his friends when she inherited nearly $2 million upon her father’s death and became 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 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. She 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. 

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 (19). 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 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 (1851-1936), the widow of Robert Garrett (1847-1896). 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”.

More to come!