Nursing has a long history of advocacy and activism on behalf of vulnerable populations. For Women’s History Month, we have been drawing attention to the theme of the intimate connection between nursing history and women’s history. In this post, we share an image of nurses at the Henry Street Settlement in New York’s Lower East Side in the late 19th century, where nurse and social worker Lillian Wald organized nurses to bring essential health services and much more to the poor immigrant populations of the area.

A new model of possibility.

These early visiting nurses established a new model of possibility that has echoed through efforts since to improve the health and living conditions of millions. The following text, from the editorial comment in the January 1902 issue of the American Journal of Nursing, suggests that the efforts of these progressive nurses in the Lower East Side threw into relief some of the forces of corruption in New York City’s famed and powerful political machine that were keeping the poor in such abysmal and unhealthy living and working conditions.

Henry Street Settlement Nurse, Lower East Side, New York City

“After the downfall of Tammany, the public press commented to some extent upon the work of the ‘Settlements’ as a factor in bringing about this great victory, and special mention was made of the fact that the women of the ‘Nursing Settlement’ on Henry Street had been largely influential in rousing the women of upper New York to a knowledge of the terrible conditions that existed in the slum districts under Tammany rule.

“The circumstance is of interest to the profession…, for the reason that nurses, for the first time, were given recognition as political reformers, a place that, in the future, they would fill with great honor.”

Start somewhere.

Systemic problems are real, and can appear daunting. But these nurses show us that to take concrete action to address the specific issue before us (in this case, bringing essential health care, health resources, and health education to the poor) inevitably creates a friction with the forces that have brought that problem into being. Then it may become possible for us all to envision broader change.