Editor's note: This article was written by Susan Fisher, BA, RN, a former nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital and chair of the Publications and Communications Committee for the MGH Nurses' Alumni Association. It originally appeared in the alumni association's newsletter.
A chance discovery led to an Massachusetts General Hospital story not previously, nor still, fully told. Here is what happened.
In mid-2022, a lovely article appeared in a blog titled, “Bench Press,” about one of our early graduates, Elizabeth Scovil (1880).
I shared it with Mary Larkin, Mass General Nurses' Alumni Association (NAA) history committee chair and fellow history enthusiast, who emailed the author, Andrew Glyman, about our shared interest.
Andrew is a history intern at an Mass General entity previously unknown to me, the Mass General Research Institute (MGRI).
Andrew is part of the communications team of the group, which publicizes science news and discoveries from the MGRI through its blog. He replied:
“I found her by chance while working on a project for the Mass General Research Institute. I was told to look through newspaper archives for mentions of Massachusetts General Hospital. I've reviewed the archives from 1822 all the way to 2022 in order to find any mentions of MGH using a public newspaper archive.
"I found her name while looking through the archives and learned she was the author of two newspaper columns on nursing. In conducting my research, I found that she had very little written about her. I felt that she had been lost to time and wanted to honor her legacy by reviving her.
"She was an important person, not only to Massachusetts General Hospital, but to nursing in general. I thought it was time for her story to see the light of day.”
This is an incentive felt by most of us in the MGH and NAA nursing history committees.
Over a year later, in November 2023, Mary was contacted by this group when they became aware that we were celebrating our 150th anniversary.
They wanted to explore doing perhaps a series of stories about the school and its nurses. By that time, although our main celebration was over, we “zoomed” to get acquainted and discuss ideas and project possibilities.
A lively discussion produced the kernel of a plan that we would work together to produce some of the stories of under-recognized MGH School of Nursing (SON) nurses for publication in their blog.
As an initial step they were directed to our website, video, luminaries' booklet and digitized materials.
We received follow-up email from Andrew containing a list of many links he had found related to the school and its history.
Some links led us back to published works and/or digitized material from our own archives (gratifying to see the material is readily accessible to outside researchers) and some suggested new areas for study.
One link in particular led us to the topic of clinical research. The link was to a scrapbook, for sale online by an antiquarian bookseller in the Rochester, NY area.
An image of the scrapbook purchased from an antiquarian bookseller in Rochester, NY.
The scrapbook had been compiled by S(arah) Marian MacAulay, RN, during her ten years working on Ward 4, the Mallinckrodt Research Unit of the MGH from 1941 to 1951, nine of them as the head nurse.
The seller’s description included photos of some of the contents: some newspaper clippings, some School of Nursing ephemera, and pictures of staff and patients.
I indicated to our colleagues that I felt it belonged in the MGH archives and began corresponding with the seller.
He sent the book “on approval,” even though I was quite certain about the purchase, especially because of the patient photos. I mailed him a check as soon as I had looked it over.
The book itself is a bit larger than normal, 106 pages, most with items glued down or laid in where the glue has dried.
A photograph of the Bulfinch building on Mass General's main campus from the scrapbook of Marian MacAulay, RN.
From the first page (snapshot of the Bulfinch seen at left) it is apparent that the book’s creator had a very close connection to her workplace.
The included items convey a familiarity, warmth and comfort with both the environment and the people inhabiting it.
Perusing the scrapbook, questions arose for us right away.
Throughout the book there is school-of-nursing related material, such as graduation invitations, notices from the school, and other bits of ephemera, suggesting a closer connection than would be expected.
So as a non-graduate, non-instructor, what was MacAulay’s connection to the school of nursing?
This was easily resolved. A simple search of our archive.org website, using her name, returned several School of Nursing catalogues of the period which list the head nurses (MacAulay among them) at the end of the faculty list, so they were considered part of the teaching staff.
A bit more detail was provided by Dr. James Howard Means in his memoir of the history of the unit, Ward 4, published in 1958:
“The head nurse has a great deal to do with setting the tone of the ward and holding it together as a cooperative unit...Always a graduate nurse herself, the head nurse has a flock (usually four) of pupil nurses to help carry out her many duties.
"They are assigned on a rotational basis by the Nurses’ Training School of the hospital. The head nurse has the opportunity to exercise her teaching ability in training these pupils in a very special type of nursing, namely research nursing.”
He comments further on the importance of the nurse and dietician in the unit:
“The devotion of all the women who in succession have held these two offices has made the success of the ward possible. It is they who have kept the ward going smoothly and always ready to serve the cause of research, yet at the same time they have seen that the nursing and dietetic care of all patients in the ward is constantly of first class quality.
"They also have had to satisfy the diverse requirements of the several investigators. This has called for patience, tact, understanding of the purposes involved, and maturity in personal relations.”
No names (other than physicians) are mentioned.
From left to right are Shirley Wells, Marian MacAulay and Fuller Albright, MD.
The Life and Career of Research Nurse Marian MacAulay
Marian MacAulay (1917-2012) was not an alumna of the Mass General School of Nursing. According to her obituary, she was born in Clinton, MA, and grew up in Prince Edward Island, Canada, where she attended Notre Dame Academy and Prince of Wales College, then graduated from the Charlottetown Hospital School of Nursing in 1941.
She began working on Ward 4 at Mass General in that same year, first as a staff nurse and later as head nurse. The scrapbook shows us she was close to her colleagues and patients, with pictures and ephemera of both throughout.
She served on SON committees and attended school functions. She was also active with the Massachusetts Nurses’ Association and presented at the combined MNA/MNLN annual meeting of 1,600 nurses in 1948 on the topic, “Nursing Management of Patients Receiving Radioactive Medicine.”
What happened to MacAulay after she left Ward 4? Her obituary says she moved to Oklahoma. An internet search produced the Journal of the Oklahoma State Medical Association for January 1952.
In 1951, she and the Ward 4 head dietician, Shirley Wells (who had had fifteen years experience on the unit) moved to Oklahoma City, OK, to become the first director of nursing and dietician at the new Oklahoma Research Institute and Hospital there.
The journal reports: “Miss MacAulay will participate in the planning of the clinical research program which is being evolved at the Research Hospital. She will be in charge of the undergraduate and graduate training programs for nurses at the Research Hospital."
She joined the staff of the Institute in August, 1951. In addition, Miss MacAulay has an appointment as Research Associate in the University of Oklahoma School of Nursing.”
A similar note describes Ms. Wells’ role. We have not pursued this but clearly they brought Ward 4-honed skills and experience to bear on this new unit, which they partly created based on the Mass General model.
We have not pursued MacAulay’s career beyond this point. Her obituary tells us that she ended her career at Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY, apparently retired in West Harwich, MA, and died at age 95 in the Rochester, NY area, which is where the scrapbook was obtained by the bookseller.
Questions About Ward 4 and Future Research
Questions about Ward 4 before and after the MacAulay years have come up, sparked by our look into her life.
We wondered, for instance, who was the first head nurse when the ten-bed unit opened in November, 1925 on the first floor of Bulfinch. Was she an School of Nursing graduate?
Most of the nursing staff at that time was still comprised of graduates of the school. Who were other nurses that worked there in the early days of the research unit? How were they involved in the research beyond the day-to-day care of patients, many of them children who often stayed for months? How does their work connect with today’s nursing research and research nursing practice?
And who are some MGH nurses involved in other pioneering research efforts at MGH? And what of Ward 4 itself in the years after 1957?
Although we have not yet discovered the identity of the first Ward 4 head nurse, we have found the names of five MGH graduates (so far) who spent time there, either as students or graduates.
Augusta Brooks (1926) we learned was the head nurse for a few years beginning in 1927 before going on for advanced education and then serving as Director of Nursing Service and Education at Hartford Hospital for almost 30 years.
A lovely memorial and tribute from her students appears in the Quarterly Record of Spring/Summer,1980.
Other MGH nurses whom we have discovered that worked there include Amanda Hardy (1926), Anna Ryan (1933), Marion Bates (1934), Marjorie Chase Cheever (1942) and Nancy DiMattia Sannella (1951), all tributaries that have yet to be explored, along with the as yet unknown names.
We plan to explore more deeply the ways that nurses have contributed to clinical research, either at the bedside caring for patients enrolled in research studies, or by pursuing their own scientific inquiries.
About the Mass General Research Institute
Research at Massachusetts General Hospital is interwoven through more than 30 different departments, centers and institutes. The goal of our research is to better understand human health and disease and to identify new strategies for prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Your support will help us pursue new and unproven areas of research that could lead to the next game-changing breakthroughs.
Very interesting! Will you be displaying other pages of the scrap book & pictures?
Thank you
Thanks for this! I remember the Mallinckrodt unit well. Always admired the working relationships the RNS had with the medical staff. Worked on Bulfinch 3 ICU then went to lower wards 1969-73. After that went to the OPD where I attended the MGH/Harvard nurse practitioner program and continued in that role till 2020. Since then doing RN per diem through Bulfinch Temps. Hard to leave even if we don’t call it MGH anymore…1