The Pittsburgh Press from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 243

Women's Lib In Pittsylvania History Part VIII (Last of a Series) Sitae ton9tedl A MospitoIl dDim Wr. Louise Lyle Had To Wait 31 any Years Hoi ore She Got Her Big Opportunity tint She Heally Blade The Most Ot What She Had By George Swetnam up. She rented a three-story house at 31 Sherman in what was then old Allegheny, for $50 a month, on credit. With one of the five dollars she hired a woman to help clean the place up. She had already arranged for furnishings on the installment plan, no money down.

People were so frantic to do any kind of business at the time that a person of consequence could get almost any kind of terms. Soon there were five rooms ready, and Dr. Jane Vincent (Pittsburgh's first woman physician) brought the first patient. Although service was free to the indigent, this one was able to pay $15 a week. In a short time the place was full (there seems to be no factual basis for the oft-published statement that Dr.

Lyle had to take in boarders at first to make ends meet) and by the end of 1894 all debts were paid, and there were several hundred dollars in the till. Feeling that food was often as important to the sick as medicine, Dr. Lyle in addition to her duties as superintendent and staff physician-did the marketing, supervised the kitchen, and often arranged the trays. Nothing succeeds like success. In December the church officially gave its approval to the work, and the following month the hospital waS incorporated by 16 of the principal women of the city.

Growth was rapid, and they rented the house next door, bringing the capacity to 24 beds. In 1896 the institution treated 388 patients, 133 of them free. Now BuiMiti In 1901 the hospital moved to a building on Ridge Avenue, and increased its capacity to 90 beds. Dr. Lyle ceased to be the administrator, but continued to direct the school of nursing she had founded on Arch Street.

Her dream of a Visiting Nurses' Association had also been realized. The hospital bought land at the corner of Sherman and Montgomery avenues in 1905, but before its first new building had been finished, she retired to the family home at Buffalo. Before her death on Oct. 16, 1912, however, she was brought in a wheel chair to see the present building in Oakland, then under construction. She would have been happy to know that in less than three quarters of a century from its founding her institution would become the present Presbyterian-University Hospital, at the heart of a great medical center.

long enough to raise money and rebuild the church. She was also president of the YWCA, and active in work among prisoners. During this period she became more than ever impressed by the problems of poverty, and the need of the poor for medical treatment, and she determined to study medicine. Her dreams included the founding of a hospital where patients could receive not only treatment but appetizing food and physical comfort; of a training school for nurses, and a visiting nurses' association so that the poor could have care without the cost of maintaining a nurse full time. She entered medical school in Cincinnati, but failed to pass her examinations at the end of the year.

Although she never said it, her later distinguished career might suggest that her failure was due more to male prejudice than any lack of effort or ability on her part. Rebuffed, Mrs. Lyle joined with others in helping to found the Women's Medical College of Cincinnati, and graduated there when nearly 50 years of age. As a resident on the staff, Dr. Lyle organized a free dispensary for women and children, then went to Newark, Ohio, where she established a hospital and got it on a solid basis.

But Louise Wotring Lyle couldn't forget her experiences in Pittsburgh, nor the conditions here during that period of great fortunes and dire poverty, "where wealth accumulates and men decay." In 1893, in the midst of a financial panic, she came to Pittsburgh determined to establish a PresbyteiTan hospital. Her first move was to call on all the ministers of the denomination here. Every one, she later reported, was in hearty sympathy. But not one came up with any money. By this time Dr.

Lyle was down to her last $5, but wasn't about to give LOUISE WOTRING (later Dr. Lyle) was born Aug( 31, 1842 in Washington County, and all her life was a typical Virgo the server in the Sixth House, helpfulness and health. She achieved great things working almost completely alone. And like Mary Irwin, Pittsburgh's first woman industrialist, she found her individual place in the world through her husband's collapse and death. Louise was among the younger of the 11 children born to Judge Abra ham Wotring and his wife, Elizabeth Rahauser, daughter of a clergyman.

She was born on her father's farm near Buffalo, and received a good education in the public schools and at Washington Seminary. Because studying medicine was well-nigh impossible for a woman in that day, she turned to social work, becoming an assistant at the Second Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh at about the beginning of the Civil War. Itusy With Nursing Many sick and wounded soldiers were being brought here, and in her work of nursing, making bandages and preparing medical supplies, she met Joseph G. Lyle, a student at Western Theological Seminary. They were married following his graduation, and she helped with his ministerial work in Illinois, at Homestead, and in the Third Presbyterian Church at Wheeling.

A disastrous flood struck that city on Feb. 7, 1884, destroying the church, their home and those of many in their parish. Working to help others, Lyle overtaxed his strength and died of fatigue and overexertion. Widowed at 41, and with no children, Mrs. Lyle remained in Wheeling Dr.

Louise W. Lylj Tk Pittsburgh toss. Smdoy, November 18, 1 97 1 Po9 3.