Anna Blount

Anna Blount (January 18, 1872 - February 12, 1953) was an American physician from Chicago,[1] and Oak Park.[2] She was awarded Doctor of Medicine June 17, 1897 by Northwestern University. She volunteered her medical services at Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago that was founded in 1889. She encouraged other women to become physicians and was the president of the National Medical Women's Association.[3]

Anna Ellsworth Blount
Blount and her young daughter Ruth, in 1911
Born(1872-01-18)January 18, 1872
Oregon, Wisconsin, United States
DiedFebruary 12, 1953(1953-02-12) (aged 81)
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
OccupationDoctor specializing in obstetrics and gynecology
Known forDoctor, Suffragist, Activist in public health
Spouse(s)Ralph Earl Blount
ChildrenWalter Putnam Blount, MD
Earl Ellsworth Blount
Ruth Amelia Blount (Bennett), MD

Sex Education and Birth Control

She was a proponent of birth control and a leader in the birth control movement in the United States.[4] She was a frequent contributor to the Birth Control Review.[5] She served on the committee of the First American Birth Control Conference.[6] Blount gave lectures on "sex hygiene" to Chicago high schools,[7] clubs and to universities.[8] She created pamphlets, such as A Talk With Mothers, which discussed condom use.[9] She believed that "shielding women" from information about sexually transmitted disease was wrong.[10] When it was still illegal to do so, Blount gave out information about birth control in direct violation of laws against discussing birth control in order to test those laws.[11]

“In the Chicago Citizens Committee for Birth Control was active Anna Blount, member of the CWC, who in the twenties emphasized the necessity of increasing the number of women among physicians. Nota bene, her guide on birth control was titled: A Talk to Mothers by a Doctor Who is a Mother Herself. She introduced herself here as professionally prepared for counseling in the area of birth control, as well as a woman who shared these experiences with other women. Her status was legitimized by the fact of her having three children and specializing in gynecology and pediatrics.”[12]

Dr. Blount also supported the idea of eugenics.[13] Blount called eugenics "the most important movement of modern times."[14] She chaired the Eugenics Education Society of Chicago.[15] Blount believed that people should choose to have children with only the most mentally and physically healthy individuals.[16] She believed that "cruelty is a hereditary characteristic."[17] She connected alcoholism with heredity as well.[10] Blount even believed that lowering the population size would prevent war and world hunger.[18]

Blount did not believe that people who were unhappy with one another should stay married, and proposed that obtaining a divorce should be made easier in the courts.[19] She advocated that juries on divorce trials should be made up of women.[20]

Woman's Suffrage
Blount in a suffrage rally in Illinois.

Dr. Blount was a leader in the women's suffrage movement.[21][22][23][24][25] She was a member of the Chicago Woman's Club and the Nineteenth Century Woman's Club of Oak Park.[4][26] Blount spoke out against club organizations attempting to prevent African American women from joining.[2] Concerning Dr. Blount's involvement in the woman's suffrage movement, The Gentle Force says,

"Dr. Anna Blount and Grace Wilbur Trout ... achieved state-wide reputations as leaders for the cause, and both served on the Municipal Suffrage Commission in Illinois, as did Club members Grace Hall Hemingway and Anna Lloyd Wright. Dr. Blount was an active physician and surgeon, with a specialty in obstetrics and gynecology. She campaigned vigorously for suffrage, and in 1906 she, along with Elizabeth Ball and Phoebe Butler, established the Suburban Civics and Equal Suffrage Association (later the League of Women Voters). According to the local paper, this Association was founded by 'some of the most prominent women in Illinois, who have made an imperishable record for their service in the cause of woman suffrage.'"[27]

Note that Grace Hall Hemingway was the mother of author Ernest Hemingway and Anna Lloyd Wright was the mother of architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

In The Young Hemingway Michael Reynolds says, "In 1907, to the amusement of male Oak Parkers, the Illinois Equal Suffrage convention was held at Scoville Institute, where Dr. Anna Blount, a local woman, was the wittiest and most persuasive voice." [28]

Concerning Blount's high reputation, at pages 106-107 Reynolds states,

"In those days in Oak Park, wives were known in the newspaper by their husbands' names: Mrs. John Farson, Mrs. William Barton. In contrast, Hemingway's mother always appeared as Mrs. Grace Hall Hemingway. Only two other women appeared in such fashion: Dr. Anna Blount, who led the suffragist movement in Oak Park and Illinois, and made contributions at the national level in the fight for the vote; and Belle Watson-Melville, a performer on the national Chautauqua circuit."

Personal life

Dr. Anna Blount and her husband, Ralph Earl Blount, both worked at Hull House.[29] They lived in Oak Park, IL, and had three children: Walter Putnam,[30] Earl Ellsworth, and Ruth Amelia.[31] Both Walter and Ruth became doctors, with Ruth, who received her Doctor of Medicine degree from Northwestern University on June 16, 1934, being one of the women "encouraged ... to become physicians" by her mother, as has been referred to above.[32][33]

Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska refers to Dr. Blount as "a physician, suffragist, and social activist. She graduated in medicine from the Women’s Medical School of Northwestern University and in gynecology and pediatrics from a university in Munich.”[34] Dr. Blount had an active medical practice. For example, she delivered Iovanna, the daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright and his mistress, later wife, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright:

"On December 2, 1925, at about six o'clock in the evening, Wright received the 'anxiously awaited call' from Dr. Anna Blount, the obstetrician. Wright evaded the photographers by entering the hospital through the rear. 'Dr. Anna Blount herself let me in,' Wright recalled, 'and proudly led me to the room where a little white bundle lay. A delicate pink face showing in the hollow of her mother's arm.' Holding his newborn daughter to the light, he declared, 'You're as big as a minute.'".[35]

Dr. Blount's prominence in the Chicago area was illustrated by a 1934 photograph of her, her daughter-in-law, and recently born granddaughter appearing on the front page of the Chicago Herald and Examiner. The caption to the photo reads, "ALL SMILES ... Dr. Anna Blount ..., a veteran of the Women's and Children's Hospital, is shown holding her granddaughter, Elizabeth, 5 days old, as her daughter-in-law, Esther Stamm Blount, smiles happily." [36] An article also on the front page is titled, "Hospital Run Efficiently By Women Alone," and states that the Women's and Children's Hospital had existed since Civil War days and had just celebrated its seventieth anniversary.

References

Citations
  1. "Suffragists Find Teas Help Cause". The Leavenworth Times. 7 January 1913. Retrieved 22 January 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. Knupfer, Anne Meis (1996). Toward a Tenderer Humanity and a Nobler Womanhood: African American Women's Clubs in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago. New York: New York University Press. p. 54. ISBN 0814746713.
  3. "U.W. Clubs". The Wisconsin Alumni Magazine. 27 (9): 288. July 1926.
  4. "Protests Move to Curb Birth". Chicago Daily Tribune. 3 January 1917. Retrieved 18 January 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. Weingarten, Karen (2014). Abortion in the American Imagination: Before Life and Choice, 1880-1940. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. p. 52. ISBN 9780813565309.
  6. Sanger, Margaret (1918). "First American Birth Control Conference". Birth Control Review. 2: 16.
  7. Pearson, Maurice W. (1913). "Popular Medical Education". Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. 168 (26): 943. doi:10.1056/NEJM191306261682601. Retrieved 22 January 2017.
  8. Oveyssi 2015, p. 33.
  9. Brodie, Janet Farrell (1997). Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. p. 209. ISBN 9780801484339.
  10. Oveyssi 2015, p. 23.
  11. "Club Women To Defy Law and Preach Birth Control". The Denver Post. 29 September 1916. Retrieved 18 January 2017.
  12. Kuźma-Markowska, Zdrowe Matki, Chichiane Dzieci, pages 193-194
  13. "Catholic Priest Argues Against Birth Control". Chicago Daily Tribune. 25 March 1917. Retrieved 22 January 2017.
  14. "Look Before Leaping is Eugenics Advice". The Inter Ocean. 8 March 1914. Retrieved 22 January 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  15. Rembis, Michael A. (2011). Defining Deviance: Sex, Science and Delinquent Girls, 1890-1960. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. p. 19. ISBN 9780252036064.
  16. Roche, Claire M. (2003). "Reproducing the Working Class: Tillie Olsen, Margaret Sanger and American Eugenics". In Cuddy, Lois A.; Roche, Claire M. (eds.). Evolution and Eugenics in American Literature and Culture, 1880-1940: Essays on Ideological Conflict and Complicity. London: Bucknell University Press. p. 264. ISBN 0838755550.
  17. Oveyssi 2015, p. 16.
  18. "Reduce Births, Thus Prevent Future Wars, Says Woman". Los Angeles Herald. 25 October 1915. Retrieved 22 January 2017 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.
  19. "Free Love Doctrine Agitates Chicago". The Rock Island Argus and Daily Union. 29 March 1913. Retrieved 22 January 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  20. "Make Divorces Easier". The Richmond Item. 27 August 1907. Retrieved 22 January 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  21. "Women Plan Tactics for Victory". Woman's Journal. 153 (20). May 18, 1912. Retrieved 22 January 2017 – via HeinOnline.
  22. "On Boat Trip for Suffrage". Lawrence Daily Journal-World. 19 August 1912. Retrieved 22 January 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  23. "Trout Wing Holds Sway Over Women". The Rock Island Argus and Daily Union. 8 November 1913. Retrieved 22 January 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  24. "Fur Flies When the Sanitary Seekers Take a Fall Out of the Fussy Suff'ers". The Gazette Times. Pittsburgh. 5 April 1913. Retrieved 22 January 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  25. "Dr. Anna Blount Deplores Insufficiency of Suffrage". Chicago Daily Tribune. 9 July 1913. Retrieved 22 January 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  26. Poplett and Porucznik, The Woman Who Never Fails, page 14.
  27. Poplett and Porucznik, The Gentle Force, page 60.
  28. Michael Reynolds, The Young Hemingway, Basil Blackwell, 1986, p 12. ISBN 0 631 14786 1.
  29. http://janeaddams.ramapo.edu/about-jane-addams/hull-house-residents, retrieved 10/10/2019.
  30. For example, see Blount's disease; and https://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/1249.html, retrieved 10/21/19.
  31. For example, see Ruth Blount Bennett, MD, and W.P. Blount, MD, Destruction of Epiphyses By Freezing, The Journal of the American Medical Association, August 31, 1935, Vol 105, pp 661-662.
  32. “Prominent Woman’s Suffrage Workers Have Big Families: Duty of Motherhood Argument for Granting of the Ballot,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, March 3, 1912, page 75.
  33. Kuźma-Markowska, Zdrowe Matki, Chichiane Dzieci, pages 193-194.
  34. Kuźma-Markowska, Zdrowe Matki, Chichiane Dzieci, page 285
  35. page 112, Roger Friedland & Harold Zellman, The Fellowship/The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright & The Taliesin Fellowship, Harper Perennial 2006/2007.
  36. Chicago Herald and Examiner, January 15, 1934, page 1

Sources
  • Kuźma-Markowska, Sylwia (2010). Zdrowe Matki, Chichiane Dzieci/Ruch Kontroli Urodzeń W Stanie Illinois (1923-1941). Wydawnietwo Neriton, Warszawa. [“Healthy Mothers, Wanted Children;” translations from Polish to English by the author; an English Summary is at pages 309-312].
  • Oveyssi, Natalie Parisa (2015). "Dangerous Love: 'Positive' Eugenics, Mass Media, and the Scientific Woman, 1900-1945". Berkeley Undergraduate Journal. 28 (2): 1–54.
  • Poplett, Carolyn O.; Porucznik, Mary Ann (1992) [1988]. The Gentle Force: A History of the Nineteenth Century Woman's Club of Oak Park. A. & H. Lithoprint.
  • Poplett, Carolyn O.; Porucznik, Mary Ann (2000). The Woman Who Never Fails: Grace Wilbur Trout and Illinois Suffrage. The Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest. ISBN 0-9667926-1-0.
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