The History of Illinois Training School for Nurses at Cook County Hospital in Chicago.

The Illinois Training School for Nurses (ITSN) was established on September 21, 1880, by a group of prominent Chicago women dedicated to training young women to care scientifically for the sick.

The old Cook County Hospital. The original building was when the school entered on May 1, 1881, and the administration building (center) was finished in 1882.

Twenty-five directors, all female, headed the project. Prominent among these were Sarah L. Wright, Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, Margaret Lawrence, Lucy L. Flower, and Elizabeth B. Carpenter.

Illinois Training School for Nurses - Nurses Home.

Considerable political opposition to the plan was based on the belief that modest young women of good moral character were not suited for a profession that required a rigorous education, long hours of work, and intimate contact with strangers. However, on November 13, 1880, the Chicago Medical Society passed a resolution affirming its support for ITSN. On December 1, the Cook County Commissioners and the Training School agreed that the County would pay the school to provide trained instructors and student nurses to staff one medical and one surgical ward of the Cook County Hospital.

Illinois Training School for Nurses student's room.

Illinois Training School for Nurses student's room.

On May 1, 1881, the first pupil nurses began working in the wards, replacing untrained male nurses who had held their positions through political appointments. Later that year, the school began providing nurses for the lying-in ward [1]. Other wards followed shortly: in 1882, all remaining female and medical wards; in 1883, the surgical wards; in 1893, the contagious disease hospital; in 1897, the skin and venereal wards. Eventually, ITSN provided nursing services for every ward of Cook County Hospital. Working so closely with one of the world's largest public hospitals, the Illinois Training School for Nurses attracted many prominent pioneers in nursing education. Superintendents of ITSN included Mary Brown and Edith Draper from New York's Bellevue Training School, Mary C. Wheeler, an early ITSN graduate, and Laura Logan, who helped establish the University of Cincinnati School of Nursing. Under the leadership of women like these, ITSN gradually added many special programs and pioneering innovations to its curriculum, including private nursing, a visiting nurse service, post-graduate and dietician programs, and affiliation with other nursing schools.

First graduates from the Illinois Training School for Nurses; Spring & Fall of 1883.
1) Sophie Falk, 2) Melissa J. Bartles, 3) Angie Bean, 4) Phebe Brown,
5) Anna Steere 6) Helen Nutting 7) Janet Topping

Private nursing was begun in April 1883 as a service to the sick outside the hospital. Trained student nurses were dispatched to work full-time in private homes, thus filling a genuine need within the community while raising additional funds for the school.

Crerar nursing, begun in the fall of 1892 through a bequest of John Crerar, was a critical service in the years before the widespread activities of the Visiting Nurses Association. Crerar nurses, who were ITSN students, provided nursing care in the homes of low-income families who paid a minimal fee to the school. In this way, ITSN could provide community service as it trained students. Private nursing and Crerar nursing were necessary public relations measures that helped create public support for a school that increasingly depended on contributions and bequests to purchase buildings and expand services and training.

Illinois Training School for Nurses - Nursery

In May of 1885, ITSN agreed to provide nurses for the Presbyterian Hospital. This service was interrupted in November for financial reasons but was resumed in 1888. It continued for fifteen years until 1903, when the increasing size of both Presbyterian and Cook County Hospitals made it impossible for ITSN to staff both facilities.

In 1895, ITSN began admitting a few post-graduate nurses. In 1920 a post-graduate course for dieticians was established, for which a college degree was a pre-requisite.

Medical staff, including Dr. F.A. Besley holding infants at the Illinois Training School for Nurses.

The affiliation began in 1905. This program allowed students from smaller schools to spend their final year of training at ITSN, working in the wards of Cook County Hospital and gaining a breadth of experience unavailable in smaller hospitals. Dixon Hospital, Brokaw Hospital of Bloomington, Passavant of Chicago, and Moline Hospital were some of the early participants in the program.

With its many unique programs and innovations in nursing education, ITSN was long interested in improving education for nurses and elevating their professional status. The quality of education at ITSN was consistently upgraded over the years through the addition of more required medical and scientific coursework, a greater breadth of practical experience in the hospital wards, and an increase in the length of time necessary to receive the nursing certificate, from 24 months to 36 months.

Illinois Training School for Nurses
Graduation Pin

In 1926, after much exploration of the issue, ITSN agreed to merge its corporate identity with the University of Chicago (U of C). In return, U of C would later establish a nursing school to award its graduates a Bachelor of Science degree. ITSN continued to operate independently until 1929 when the merger took effect, and ITSN ceased to exist. All ITSN property and assets reverted to the University of Chicago, and ITSN contracts with the Cook County Commissioners were terminated.

The County Commissioners, who had relied almost entirely upon ITSN nurses to staff the Cook County Hospital, established its own training school to perform the same function. The County rented the former ITSN facilities from their new owner, the University of Chicago, hired the former ITSN faculty to staff the school, and allowed ITSN students to transfer with full credit to the Cook County School of Nursing (CCSN). Although CCSN was a continuation of ITSN, the Illinois Training School ceased to exist as a corporate identity upon its legal merger with the University of Chicago. The name of the Illinois Training School for Nurses was to be perpetuated in a scholarship fund for the University of Chicago's School of Nursing.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] Lying-in (or confinement) is an old childbirth practice involving a woman having bed rest postpartum after giving birth.

ADDITIONAL READING
"History of the Illinois Training School for Nurses, 1880-1929." Published 1930.
In my Digital Research Library of Illinois History®