![]() ![]() She left medical school and moved with a friend to the College Settlement House on the Lower East Side. Because of the cramped quarters and lack of upkeep on the buildings, many tenement residents were frequently sick.Īfter providing health care to a young girl’s mother in a dirty, dilapidated tenement, Wald decided to dedicate her life’s work to the tenement community. Because rents were low, they were the housing choice for many newly arrived immigrants, and it was not unusual for a family of 10 to live in a 325-square-foot apartment. Many of these families lived in tenement housing, low-rise, cheaply built apartment buildings. In fact, if the Lower East Side was its own city, it would have been the largest Jewish city in the nineteenth century. At the time that Wald was working there, it was also home to a large Jewish immigrant population. While organizing classes and providing nursing on the Lower East Side, Wald witnessed first-hand the hardship and deprivation experienced by poor immigrant families living in the neighborhood. The Lower East Side was an incredibly diverse and densely populated area. In 1889, Wald met a young nurse who inspired her to go into nursing herself. She enrolled at the New York Hospital Training School and upon her graduation in 1891, went to work for the New York Juvenile Asylum, an orphanage. Beyond caring for the children, Wald helped with a class about home nursing for poor immigrant families on the Lower East Side. She also began classes at the Women’s Medical College in New York. She then traveled for six years, touring the world and working briefly as a newspaper reporter. While there she was educated at the Miss Cruttenden’s English/French Boarding and Day School where she excelled in languages, arts, math, and science. Wald applied to Vassar College, a premier all-women's college in New York, at 16 hoping to continue her studies but was rejected due to her age. In 1878, the family moved to Rochester, New York, which Wald considered her hometown. Wald considered herself a “spoiled” child, growing up in a happy home always filled with books and music. Wald, was a successful optical goods merchant and her mother, Minnie Schwarz, was amiable and warm. Her ancestors had left Europe after the 1848 revolutions to seek new opportunities in the United States and had done well. Her father, Max D. Wald experienced a childhood of privilege. As a “practical idealist who worked to create a more just society,” Wald fought for public health care, women’s rights, and children’s rights while running the Henry Street Settlement.īorn the third of four children to a Jewish family in Cincinnati, Ohio on March 10, 1867, Lillian D. ![]() ![]() Wald helped to bring health care to the residents of New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century. ![]()
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