Lavinia Dock Collection

Biography

Lavinia Dock was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1858. She graduated from the Bellevue Training School for Nurses in 1886. In 1889 she helped in the disaster relief effort following the devastating flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. In 1890 she became Isabel Hampton’s assistant superintendent at the Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses, where she was in charge of instruction . The same year, her textbook Materia Medica for Nurses which quickly became a standard in Nursing curriculum was published. She spoke at the Columbian Exposition at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893. In 1907, along with Mary Adelaide Nutting she wrote the illustrated A History of Nursing. She went on to write more books on the history of nursing, including A Short History of Nursing with Isabel M. Stewart in 1920, and History of American Red Cross Nursing with Sarah E. Pickett in 1922. She was a member of the Nurses’ Settlement in New York, Secretary of the American Federation of Nurses and of the International Council of Nurses. She was also a member of the National Women’s Party which campaigned for the equal rights amendment introduced in 1923. She served as secretary for the International Council of Nurses from 1899 to 1922. From 1900 to 1923 she was a contributing editor for the American Journal of Nursing’s “Foreign Department”. She was made an honorary member of the Johns Hopkins Nurses’ Alumnae Association at its founding in 1892. In 1976 she was inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame.

Scope and Content

The Lavinia Dock Collection contains correspondence and photographs. Additional original material pertaining to Dock can be found in the records of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses and the Johns Hopkins Nurses’ Alumni Association.

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