At first, it doesn’t seem like an unusual story. A young woman, after caring for loved ones who suffered and eventually died from serious health problems, is inspired to become a nurse. Many nurses share that story. What is unusual about Linda Richards is that she was the first professionally trained nurse in the United States.
Richards was born on July 27, 1841 in West Potsdam, N.Y., where she was one of three daughters of Betsy and Sanford Richards. Her father died of tuberculosis when Richards was 4, and her mother died from the same disease in 1854.
Richards, who cared for her mother until she passed away, was a teacher for several years before she met and was engaged to George Poole in 1860. Poole fought in the Civil War, where he was wounded badly. Richards nursed Poole until he died in 1869.
A lifetime of tragic loss inspired her to become a nurse. She moved to Boston, where she worked at Boston City Hospital. She left that job after three months because of poor health and substandard working conditions.
Everything changed in 1872 when Richards enrolled in the first class at the American Nurses’ training school at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston. In 1873, she became the school’s first graduate; her diploma is preserved in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution.
Richards moved to New York City and was the night supervisor at Bellevue Hospital, where she established a system for charts and medical records for every patient.
In 1874, she became the superintendent at the Boston Training School for nurses, where she turned around a fledgling program that was floundering. After attending a nurse training program for seven months in England, she returned to the United States and started a nurse training school at Boston College Hospital in 1878.
Not content to serve only Bostonians, Richards established the first nurse training school in Japan in 1886 and later started programs in Philadelphia, Michigan and Massachusetts.
She was chosen as the first president of the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools and was also head of the Philadelphia Visiting Nurses Society. She retired from nursing in 1911 at the age of 70 and wrote “Reminiscences of Linda Richards,” which has been republished as “America’s First Trained Nurses.”
Richards suffered from a stroke in 1923 and lived in the New England Hospital for Women and Children until she died in 1930. In 1994 she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y.
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