On page 67 of Emily of Deep Valley, by Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily gives a graduation speech on Jane Addams. She begins her speech like this: “A woman has awakened the social conscience of this generation.” She was certainly right. Jane Addams is often referred to as the “mother” of social work. She was born September 6th, 1860, in Cedarville, Illinois. She was born into a wealthy family but became interested in helping the less fortunate at a young age. She always knew she wanted to do something useful, so she decided she was going to be a doctor so she could live around and help the poor. Her father was encouraging in her pursuit of higher education. He wanted her to go to school closer to home. While Jane wanted to attend the then brand new women’s college, Smith Women’s College in Massachusetts. Jane decided to comply to her father’s wishes and attended Rockford Female Seminary (now Rockford University) in Rockford, Illinois. In 1881, she graduated with the hope to someday attend Smith and get a proper B.A. That summer her father died, leaving each child roughly $50,000. (Equivalent to about $1.32 million in 2016) She decided to move to Philadelphia with her sister, brother in-law, and stepmother, so that the three youths could pursue medical educations. Her brother in-law already had a previous medical degree and furthered his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, while the two sisters enrolled in the Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia. They both completed their first year, but medical complications prevented Jane from completing the degree. After a spinal operation performed by her brother in-law, he advised Jane to travel instead of study. So in 1883, Jane and her stepmother started off on a two year trip around Europe. She then decided that she didn’t need to be a doctor to help the poor. She just didn’t know what she was supposed to do yet.
When she returned home to Cedarville, she became increasingly frustrated with her life and was feeling useless leading the conventional life young women were expected to lead. In the Summer of 1887, she read a magazine article about settlement houses. She decided she wanted to visit the world’s first settlement house, Toynbee Hall, in London. So her and a group of friends set off for another trip to Europe. While in Madrid, she and her friends attended a bullfight. She was disgusted with herself after she realized she watched the fight with fascination and felt no outrage at the suffering of the animals. She knew she needed to do something to reinstate her morals, and she needed to do something fast. She didn’t want to be unfeeling anymore.
According to Wikipedia: “The settlement movement was a reformist social movement that began in the 1880s and peaked around the 1920s in England and the United States. Its goal was to bring the rich and the poor of society together in both physical proximity and social interconnectedness. Its main object was the establishment of “settlement houses” in poor urban areas, in which volunteer middle-class “settlement workers” would live, hoping to share knowledge and culture with, and alleviate the poverty of, their low-income neighbors. The settlement houses provided services such as daycare, education, and healthcare to improve the lives of the poor in these areas.”
Jane decided she wanted to open a settlement house of her own. For awhile she kept this idea to herself, eventually sharing it with her friend Ellen Gates Starr. Ellen loved the idea and wanted to help. So Jane and another friend travelled to London to visit Toynbee Hall. Ellen didn’t join them on this trip as she had a previous commitment. She became deeply interested in the work and atmosphere of Toynbee Hall. She knew she had to start a settlement house of her own back in the United States.
On September 18th, 1889 Jane and Ellen established Hull House. Hull House was the first settlement house in the United States. Jane had finally found her purpose. Jane and Ellen were the first two residents, (residents were what Hull House volunteers were called.) but that number would grow to be about 25 women. By 1911 Hull House had expanded to a total of 13 buildings. In 1912 the Bowen Country Club was the final addition to Hull House. Residents led classes on all kinds of subjects, such as: history, literature, art, sewing, and many others. In addition to these classes Hull House also held free concerts that were open to anybody as well as free lectures about current events, and operated many clubs for both adults and children.
Unlike most other settlements Hull House was not religiously affiliated. At the time most settlements were based in Christianity, and their main goal was to Christianize. Jane wanted a place for everyone to feel welcome and receive help, and she knew she would be able to help more people if Hull House was not a religious organization. She followed her father’s principle that it did not matter much whether one understood foreordination or not, but that it was very important not to pretend to understand what you didn’t understand and that you must always be honest with yourself inside, whatever happened.
Jane accomplished an astonishing amount of work throughout her life, so her story will span out over at least one more blog post, maybe two! For now let’s leave Jane to finish getting settled in at Hull House, and next week we will continue her story!
