Lilian Welsh

Lilian Welsh
Born	March 6, 1858 Columbia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	February 23, 1938(1938-02-23) (aged 79)
Education	State Normal School (BA) Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (MD)
Occupation(s)	Physician, educator, suffragist
Employer	Evening Dispensary For Working Women and Girls
Partner	Mary Sherwood
Honours	Maryland Women's Hall of Fame
Lilian Welsh Academic work Institutions Goucher College

Lilian Welsh (March 6, 1858 – February 23, 1938) was an American physician, educator,

Welsh never found a teaching position, and later became a physician at Norristown State Hospital in 1890. Two years later, Welsh joined Sherwood, to establish a private practice in Baltimore, Maryland. Welsh and Sherwood were both interested in "preventive medicine and the health of expectant mothers and babies." They encountered gender discrimination and eventually closed their private practice.^[2]

Welsh reflected in 1927:

“Most people still prefer men physicians to women in practically all lines. The women who have the largest general practice have settled, for the most part, in sections where live those who are not especially well off financially and where there are large foreign populations. In those communities which are popularly supposed to be inhabited by the more enlightened, the prejudice is all in favor of the masculine physician, no matter what may be the skill of the women."

She added:

“The most bitter critics of women as doctors and nurses were women more often than men…the conviction was deep rooted and widespread that women by nature were incapacitated for intellectual pursuits and any calling required education, knowledge and special skill were outside woman’s sphere.”

Full Professor.^[5] Welsh associated with Goucher College for thirty years.^[1]

Welsh and Sherwood later were in charge of the Evening Dispensary For Working Women and Girls that was founded by Alice Hall and Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead. They directed the dispensary until its closure in 1910.^[1] In 1897, Welsh became the secretary of the Baltimore Association for the Promotion of the University Education of Women which advocated for women be accepted into the graduate school at Johns Hopkins University.^[2] This eventually occurred in 1908.^[5]

Around the turn of the century, Welsh was on a commission to fight tuberculosis was "at the forefront" of the Children's Welfare Movement.^[5]

Suffrage advocacy and civic involvement

Welsh was an active member of the

Woman suffrage parade of 1913.^[5]

Welsh was also a member of the Arundell Club and the Arundell Good Government Club.^[2]

Personal life

Welsh never married. In 1935, she returned to her family's home in Columbia, Pennsylvania, after the death of Mary Sherwood, her long-time companion^[2] and life partner.^[3] Welsh died of encephalitis lethargica on February 23, 1938.^[2]

Honors

Welsh was posthumously inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 2017.^[6]

Selected works

Articles

• Welsh, Lilian (March 26, 1916). "Women in Medicine". The Baltimore Sun.
• Welsh, Lilian (1916). The Significance of Goucher College for Medicine. Baltimore, MD: Goucher College.
  OCLC 80277045
  .

Books

• Welsh, Lilian (1923). Fifty Years of Women's Education in The United States. Baltimore.
  OCLC 80050825.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
  )
• Welsh, Lilian (1925). Reminiscences of Thirty Years in Baltimore. Baltimore: The Norman, Remington Company.
  OCLC 2370045
  .

See also

• Women in medicine
• LGBT people in science
• List of suffragists and suffragettes

References

1. ^
   ISBN 9780674627345
   .
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} "Welsh, Lilian (1858–1938)". Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Gale Research Inc. 2002. Retrieved June 19, 2018.
3. ^
   ISBN 9780585276847
   .
4. ^ Scarborough, Katherine (July 10, 1927). "The Woman Doctor Struggles On". The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved June 19, 2018 – via Newspapers.com.
5. ^ ^{a b c d e} "Lilian Welsh, M.D." Maryland Women's Hall of Fame. Maryland Commission for Women. 2017. Retrieved June 19, 2018.
6. ^ "The Women of the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame". msa.maryland.gov. Retrieved June 19, 2018.

Further reading

• "Call to Social Service is Issued to Women". The Baltimore Sun. April 29, 1920.
• Clifford, Geraldine J. (September 15, 2014). Those Good Gertrudes: A Social History of Women Teachers in America. JHU Press. p. 326.
  ISBN 9781421414348
  .