Between Mr. Hopkins and his Vision
The Unique Position of the Orphan Asylum’s Lady Managers
“The [East Baltimore Community] School also will fulfill a century-old ambition of Johns Hopkins himself. …[He] ordered that the Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan Asylum be built at the same time as a world-class hospital.…‘Hopkins the man, not the institution, saw this need, but as the institution grew, the man got lost,’ said [Nia] Redmond, who will also serve on the school’s board. ‘Johns Hopkins would be so proud of this school. Hopkins is finally coming back to do what this man started.’” – Erica Green for the Baltimore Sun, August 26, 2011
To live in Baltimore is to be surrounded by manifestations of Mr. Johns Hopkins’ last will and testament, particularly his bequests for a Hospital and a University. In the Hard Histories Spring 2023 Research Lab, we focused on the until recently-invisible third provision of his will: the Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan Asylum (JHH COA). My research focused on the asylum’s “Lady Managers,” also known as the Board of Visitors.1 At first, I was intrigued by the Lady Managers’ unique role as a “middle woman” position in the governance and operation of the orphan asylum, but I became fascinated by the various ways they advocated for, and also devalued the humanity of, the girls resident there.
The Lady Managers, roughly 25 women from Baltimore’s patrician class, made infrequent visits to the JHH COA, met with the matrons directly in charge of girls residing there, and prepared reports and recommendations for the all-male Johns Hopkins Hospital Board of Trustees and its Committee on the JHH COA. Organized with a President, two vice presidents, a secretary, a treasurer, and general body members, the Lady Managers frequently graced the Baltimore Sun’s society section, and many were linked, whether through marriage or blood, to some of Baltimore’s most prominent and wealthy men, and, as illustrated here, mostly identified by their husbands’ names. Many of these women were active in Baltimore’s Quaker Society; some were involved with other Baltimore asylums including one for the “aged and infirm”. Still others participated in additional notable progressive movements of the time, including the Women's Christian Temperance Union.2
Over time, the Lady Managers came to mix the work of the Orphan Asylum with the working of their own private households. Though regularly heard from in writing, the Lady Managers were between 1875 and 1912 only physically present at one Johns Hopkins Hospital Board of Directors’ meeting.3 That meeting, unlike all others, was held at the home of Lady Manager Mrs. James Carey, Jr. There, the Lady Managers asserted that the girls—when their time at the Orphan Asylum concluded, usually at the age of 18—were not well enough equipped to labor as domestic workers. To remedy this and to ensure that the girls acquired skills that would prepare them to be domestic workers, the Lady Managers proposed having the girls resident in the asylum, during their last year there, work in the homes of the Lady Managers themselves.4
The archive is silent about whether girls at the JHH COA did end up working in Lady Managers’ homes, but even the proposal by itself tells us that the social distance between the Lady Managers and these girls was envisioned as fixed. At times the Lady Managers requested from the Hospital Board more frequent doctor visits for the girls, a new playground, picnics, and new toys. They created awards for the girls that were announced in the Baltimore Sun; and advocated for refurbishments of the asylum.5 These seemingly benevolent actions did not extend to planning futures that went beyond domestic service for the girls in their charge. While not entirely surprised, I was still made deeply uncomfortable by this revelation. These girls, according to the highly privileged women who purported to protect and care for them, could only go so far in life as to become servants in the Lady Managers’ homes.
Whether this approach to operating the Orphan Asylum was consistent with the vision that Mr. Johns Hopkins had for the place is difficult to say, given how little record of his thinking has survived. Was it the case, for example, that a joint effort by Johns Hopkins University and Morgan State University to assume operation of the East Baltimore Community School was a return to or a departure from Mr. Hopkins’s original vision for Black children in Baltimore? Some like Nia Redmond, today’s head of the East Baltimore Historical Library, suggest that Mr. Hopkins might have been displeased with the direction the JHH COA took under the Lady Managers’ leadership. My research into the work of the Lady Managers, especially those who were part of the same social and religious circles that Mr. Johns Hopkins once frequented, shows that it is unlikely Mr. Hopkins disagreed with how those women fulfilled his vision. To understand this facet of his legacy—one that diminished the potential of young girls in the name of caring for them—is to reckon with an often-overlooked impact that the man and the institutions he founded have had on our city.
Emma Petite, KSAS BA ‘24
Emma Katherine Bilski, Editor
“Lady Managers” was the term used at the time and in the JHH COA records. Many other Progressive-Era charitable institutions had similar Boards of Lady Managers
I conducted research through Ancestry.com, Maryland Men of Mark, the Baltimore Sun, and the Friends Society papers to uncover the activities of the Lady Managers and their husbands/fathers/brothers in greater Baltimore society. Lady Managers President Mrs. Hannah Pope, for example, was also involved with the WCTU.
Johns Hopkins Hospital Board of Trustees’ Minutes from the era of the JHH COA (1875-1914) are held at the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives. I reviewed Hospital Board Minutes that are preserved in two volumes: JHH B/T Vol 1, Articles of Incorporation & June 13, 1870 to June 8 1906, Minutes of the Board of Trustees Johns Hopkins Hospital; and Bound Volume 1.5, Minutes of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Trustees’ Committee on the COA 1898-1912, Records of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan Asylum, Series 1 Administration 1898-1912; both in the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Baltimore, MD.
April 17, 1906, Minutes of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Trustees’ Committee on the COA 1898-1912, in Records of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan Asylum, Series 1 Administration 1898-1912, Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Baltimore, MD.
For example, “MEDALS FOR COLORED ORPHANS: Reception At Hopkins Asylum -- Work Of Pupils Shown,” The Baltimore Sun; Jun 2, 1906, 8.
Stunning piece of document to see..I’m sure these girls had aspirations of their own.