Linda Richards (July 27, 1841 – April 16, 1930) is generally recognized as the first professionally trained American nurse. Renowned for her pioneering contributions, establishing nursing training programs in the United States and Japan. Additionally, Linda Richards is credited with devising the first system for keeping individual medical records for hospitalized patients.
Linda Richards was born Malinda Ann Judson Richards on July 27, 1841, in West Potsdam, New York. She was the youngest of the three daughters born to Sanford and Betsy Sinclair Richards. She was named after the missionary, Ann Hasseltine Judson by her devout parents, with the hopes that she would follow in her footsteps.
Early Life
In 1845, Richards relocated with her family to Wisconsin, where they owned some land. Tragically, shortly after their arrival, her father died of tuberculosis, and the family had to return to Richards' grandparents' residence in Newbury, Vermont. They bought a small farm on the outskirts of the town, and settled there. Unfortunately, Betsy Sinclair Richards, Linda's mother, also contracted tuberculosis. Linda nursed her mother until she succumbed to the disease in 1854. Linda was only 13 years old when both of her parents passed away.
Education
The experience with nursing her dying mother, her living with her devout maternal grandfather, and then the family physician all influenced her career path. Despite initially pursuing education at St. Johnsbury Academy in 1856 with the intention of becoming a teacher—a role she fulfilled for several years—she was never truly happy in that profession. In 1860, Richards met George Poole, to whom she became engaged. Not long after their engagement, Poole enlisted in the Green Mountain Boys and left to fight in the American Civil War. He was severely wounded in battle in 1865, and when he returned home, Richards took care of him until his death in 1869.
Motivated by these personal losses, Richards moved to Boston, Massachusetts to pursue nursing. Her first job was at Boston City Hospital, where she worked as an assistant nurse, which entailed the work of a charwoman. She received almost no training and was subjected to overwork, prompting her to leave the hospital after only three months, but she was still undeterred by her experience there. In 1872, Linda Richards made history by becoming the first student to enroll in the inaugural class of five nurses at the first American Nurse's training school. This pioneering school was run by Dr. Susan Dimock, at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston.
Reflecting on her nursing training, Richards recounted, "We rose at 5.30 a.m. and left the wards at 9 p.m. to go to our beds, which were in little rooms between the wards. Each nurse attended to her ward of six patients both day and night. Many a time I got up nine times in the night; often I did not get to sleep before the next call came. We had no evenings out, and no hours for study or recreation. Every second week, we were off duty one afternoon from two to five o'clock. No monthly allowance was given for three months."
Career
Following her graduation a year later, she relocated to New York City, where she was hired as a night supervisor at Bellevue Hospital Center. During her tenure, she created a system for keeping individual patient records, a practice that would later gain widespread adoption in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Recognizing the fact of how little she knew as a nurse, Linda embarked on a journey to acquire more knowledge, with the intention of passing this to others by establishing high quality nurse training schools.
In 1874, she returned to Boston, assuming the role of superintendent at the Boston Training School for Nurses. In this position, she encountered physician opposition to training of nurses. Despite the school's precarious status, being on the brink of closure due to poor management, Richards improved the program, transforming it into one of the best of its kind in the country. She developed a program of regular classroom instruction, instead of occasional lectures by physicians.
Linda Richards left the Boston Training School after three successful years. In 1877, Richards took an intensive, seven-month nurse training program in England. Under the mentorship of Florence Nightingale, who had established a renowned training school for nurses, Richards served as a resident visitor at St. Thomas' Hospital, King's College Hospital in London, and the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Linda returned to the United States with Nightingale's warmest wishes. Richards pioneered the founding and overseeing of nursing training schools across the nation.
Responding to her early childhood religious influences, Richards served as a missionary to Japan from 1885 to 1890. In 1885, she helped in establishing Japan's first nurses-training program. She supervised the school at Doshisha Hospital in Kyoto for five years. Upon her return to the United States in 1890, she was already equipped with the best credentials in the world for training nurses. She would continue her work as a nurse for another two decades, developing new programs or redesigning existing ones at many facilities. She helped to establish special institutions for individuals with mental illnesses. During this time, she also pioneered the creation of the first system for keeping individual medical records for hospitalized patients. She was elected as the first president of the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools, and she served as the head of the Philadelphia Visiting Nurses Society. Linda Richards retired as Superintendent Emeritus in 1911, at the age of seventy.
In retirement, she continued supporting nursing causes and penned a memoir entitled "Reminiscences of Linda Richards" in 1911. It tells about Linda Richards' experiences. The book was republished in 2006 under the title "America's First Trained Nurse."
Richards regularly attended meetings of the American Nurses Association, but a cerebral hemorrhage left her blind and disabled. With the greatest of irony, she was placed under nursing care in the New England Hospital for Women and Children, from which she had graduated a half century ago, and where she had served as superintendent more than thirty years earlier. Now a beneficiary of her own good work, she remained an invalid whose mental condition gradually declined until her death.
Death
In 1923, Linda Richards suffered a severe stroke that led to her hospitalization until her passing on April 16, 1930, three months shy of her 89th birthday.
Posthumous
Recognizing her remarkable contributions to nursing, Richards was posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994. She is commemorated in connection with Massachusetts General Hospital on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.
At the Old South Church in Boston, more than 800 nurses and nursing students attended a memorial in her honor. Among the speakers were Dr. Alfred Worcester of Harvard University, a longtime friend and supporter, who said, "How surprised Miss Richards would have been could she have foreseen that so many friends would attend her funeral, or that such a meeting as this would be held in her honor. As often happens, it is only after a life in this world has ended that its real worth is recognized. A few days ago, we could think of our old friend only as blind and pitiably helpless. Today, when we seem to see her life as a whole, we think only of her well-won glory."
Recognition of Linda’s great accomplishments has been ongoing since her death. In 1941, a century after her birth, nurses from Jefferson, Lewis, and St. Lawrence Counties formed the Linda Richards League of Nursing Education, which became the Linda Richards League for Nursing a decade later.
The 75th anniversary of her graduation from nursing school was marked in 1948 by ceremonies and events across the country. Among those involved in recognizing her contributions to American nursing were President Truman and ex-President Hoover. November 16, which was designated as Linda Richards Day, culminated in a large banquet at New York City's Biltmore Hotel, and the presentation of medals with her image to an outstanding nurse selected from each of the 48 states. A memorial room with a history exhibit was created in her honor at the New England Hospital for Women and Children.
Richards has been recognized in many other ways—with the Linda Richards Memorial Home for Nurses at the Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital (1931), the preservation of one of her uniforms by the Smithsonian in 1961, and a plaque in the Canton-Potsdam Hospital.
In 1976, along with Dorothea Dix and ten others, she was a charter inductee into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame, which credits her with becoming American’s first trained nurse, introducing the concept of written patient records, originating the use of nurse uniforms in America, and buying the first share of stock in the American Journal of Nursing.
In northern New York, the Linda Richards Society recognizes contributors to the Canton-Potsdam Hospital, and she is featured in a historical display in the Potsdam Public Museum.
Subsequent scholarly investigations have revealed that Harriet Newton Philips might have completed her nursing training before Richards, which would make Phillips the first trained nurse in the United States.