On March 27, 1901, The Charity Organization Society of Seattle advertises its new day nursery in the classified section of The Seattle Times. The nursery is initially funded equally by The Charity Organization Society of Seattle and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), each of whom has donated $50. The purpose of the day nursery is to provide childcare to mothers who need a safe place to leave their young children while they work outside the home.
Women May Leave Their Children
The day nursery advertisement ran in the "Help Wanted -- Female" section of the classified advertisements, where it would be most likely to attract the attention of job-seeking mothers of young children. For such women, having somewhere safe and relatively inexpensive to leave their very young children while they worked outside the home could be the main factor in their ability to accept paid employment.
The advertisement read, "WOMEN may leave their children during working hours at Day Nursery, 820 Jackson Street" (The Seattle Times, March 27, 1901, p. 12). This advertisement, or one similar, ran three times a week fairly steadily for the next three years. The nursery was located at the edge of the present-day International District on land that is now part of the Interstate 5 right-of-way.
Day Nurseries
The Charity Organization Society of Seattle's day nursery, although clearly an early example of such an institution in Seattle, was not the city's first. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) operated its own day nursery ca. 1890 -1892, along with a free employment service for women. That nursery was located on 10th Avenue E between E. Spring Street and E. Marion Street on land that was at the time owned by Father Francis Xavier Prefontaine (1838-1909) and is now (2012) part of Seattle University. It is unclear when the WCTU Day Nursery ceased operation, but it was almost certainly before the operation opened.
Day nurseries as a concept descended from the French creche facilities, the first of which opened in Paris in 1844 to give daytime care to the young children of working mothers. The first American day nursery opened in New York City in 1858. By 1897, there were 175 day nursery facilities in the United States, most of them in the eastern part of the country.
Day nurseries in general cared for children younger than 6 years old. By the age of six, many children whose mothers worked outside the home were expected to care for themselves, and often for younger siblings as well.
Planning and Organizing
The Charity Organization Society of Seattle was founded in 1892 as the Bureau of Associated Charities of Seattle. During this period, the organization was assisting about 50 cases each month. Assistance varied with assessed need, but could include material relief such as fuel, groceries, household goods, clothing, or lodging; help with job search; facilitating hospital admission; help finding housing; traveler's aid; day nursery services; and a sewing school training young girls for future employment.
The final planning session for the day nursery occurred on March 18, 1901, at the site. Subsequent newspaper descriptions indicate that the room in which the nursery operated was extremely modest -- one newspaper article described it as "a storage room" (The Seattle Times, April 2, 1902). Initial newspaper reports identified this as a temporary location, but the nursery operated there for nearly 13 months.
The Seattle Times described the new nursery:
"The charitable organizations of this city, the churches, etc., have combined and will establish the home where mothers of small children can leave their infants through the day while at work. ... Dr. Clarence Thwing is superintendent. Mrs. Gertrude A. Ivey is appointed matron. A committee of ladies held a meeting at the temporary quarters Monday afternoon to discuss ways and means. Mrs. L. H. Gray was chairman of the meeting. The ladies of the different societies and churches have given the project their help and the merchants will be asked to donate a sufficient sum to equip the nursery" (March 19, 1901, p. 3).
Early Days
During its first month, the Day Nursery cared for 10 children, each for an average of 10 days. This figure may indicate that their mothers were working day-labor jobs rather than more permanent positions, or even that the children were left in the day nursery while their mothers looked for work, and were subsequently cared for under other arrangements. Mothers paid between 10 and 15 cents per day for each child who used the nursery.
Although the WCTU continued to donate funds for some time, it seems clear that The Charity Organization Society of Seattle was in charge of the operation. Fees from parents covered about 20 percent of the cost of operating the Day Nursery. In July 1901, for example, parent fees totaled $8.95. Expenses came to $42.25.
The Day Nursery's matron may have been its only paid employee. A classified advertisement for the nursery that appeared in The Seattle Times on August 7, 1901, states that children using the nursery will be "under supervision of prominent ladies of Seattle" (p. 10). Records revealing the names of these volunteers and their work schedules apparently no longer exist. Presumably some of these women might have left children of their own in the care of servants or relatives while volunteering with the indigent youngsters in the Day Nursery.
A Cry for Help from the Nursery
By November 1901, the Day Nursery was actively soliciting additional funding and volunteers from the Seattle community. The Seattle Times published a letter from Gertrude A. Frye (almost certainly the same woman referred to in an earlier Times article as Gertrude A. Ivey), the Day Nursery's matron, to editorial writer Marion B. Baxter (b. 1841).
The letter read, in part:"This institution reaches a class of women and children that nothing else can reach, but is little known and understood except by a faithful few." After quoting Frye's letter, Baxter continued:
"It was as if someone had said, there is a place out on Jackson Street where Christ dwells in the form of little children, who need food and loving care, and there are mothers to whom the world is hard, whose days would run in the groove of absolute defeat but for the outstretched hand of a few of God's faithful ones ... . [I] call everyone's attention to the needs of this day nursery, where little children are cared for while their mothers go out in service to earn honest bread. It is a pitiful side of life one sees at such places, but God knows that it is sunshiny in comparison to the fate of the wee lambs of poverty who lack it" (November 9, 1901, p. 6).
A Great Improvement
In early April 1902, the day nursery was moved to a larger facility at 208 9th Avenue South near Yesler Way in what is now known as the International District. The building in which the nursery operated no longer exists. An article describing the upcoming move and soliciting donations to purchase furniture states, "The present quarters at 820 Jackson Street are inadequate and the proposed location is much better in every way. Especially is the sanitary condition a great improvement ... . The nursery is a boon to mothers who are compelled to go out to work, for they can leave their babies there during working hours and have them at home with them at night" (The Seattle Times, March 8, 1902).
With the move came a new matron: Gertrude Charlton, age 27, described by The Seattle Times as "an experienced and competent woman ... employed to be in attendance each day to give these children a mother's care and provide a noon meal for them" (April 2, 1902). The article goes on to state that "a small fee is asked from those able to pay, but many have been given freely the best attention possible."
Just one moth later, however, The Seattle Times carried news of Gertrude Charlton's death at the Day Nursery of peritonitis (probably the result of a burst appendix). She left a husband, Charles, and a 3-year-old child. By July 1902, The Charity Organization Society of Seattle was looking for a nurse to run the Day Nursery. It is unclear who was managing day-to-day operations during this period, although the steady presence of the Day Nursery advertisement in newspaper classified advertisements indicate its continued services.
Fees and Family Emergencies
The mothers who utilized the Day Nursery's services can be assumed to have had no other safe childcare choices, and to have needed desperately to work in order to feed themselves and their children. Their earnings were likely so slight that even the modest fees the Day Nursery requested cut greatly into their pay. An article in The Seattle Times on October 19, 1902, discussing secretary Dr. Clarence Thwing's (b. 1862) methodology includes a statement from "Mrs. Fred McClellan" (no first name discernible), whose husband "left her three months ago, destitute, with three children, the oldest four years of age, and the youngest only one year" (p. 1).
Mrs. McClellan's statement continues the article, and sheds light on some of the complexities experienced by mothers who used the Day Nursery:
"I have worked as much as I could, on average of about three days a week. One week I worked five days. When I go out for the day I take the two youngest children to the Day nursery ... . The older one I have had to leave at the house with the neighbors, for it would cost too much to take her to the nursery. There is a charge of 10 cents apiece, if you buy five tickets at a time, otherwise it is more. That with my [streetcar] fare takes 30 or 40 cents and very often I have had only a dollar for my work."
Temporary Closure
The January 1903 board meeting minutes mention an appropriation of $100 for the Day Nursery’s expenses for that month. February 1903 minutes state that, while the Day Nursery served 151 children during January 1903, a $90 appropriation would be needed for February’s operations. The board granted this request. That month, 189 children used the Day Nursery. March 1903 saw that number fall to 93.
In late April 1903, a member of a family lodging in the same building that housed the Day Nursery contracted scarlet fever. This resulted in the immediate quarantine of those living in the building, and the Day Nursery was shut down. The society's May 1903 board meeting minutes mention that one member has been authorized to look for another facility to house Day Nursery operations, but not until October 23, 1903, did The Seattle Times carry the news that the nursery was to be reopened at a new location: 1022 Jackson Street.
The article states that the Day Nursery will accept children 6 years old and younger. The new matron was listed as Mrs. E. J. Shriner.
Last Days of a Pioneering Day Nursery
On February 2, 1904, The Seattle Times carried a small article stating, "At the day nursery and kindergarten which has been established at No. 1022 Jackson Street, there are a number of children badly in need of clothes. The committee in charge would like donations of serviceable material which can be made into garments for the needy children" (p. 5). On March 2, 1904, The Seattle Times announced the arrival of Margaret Tremain (b. 1835), adding, "Mrs. Tremain has had thirteen years experience as the head of an orphans home in the East. She will now care for the Seattle babies in the Jackson Street nursery" (p. 7).
On October 20, 1904, the sensationalistic newspaper Seattle Star carried a front page boxed article entitled "Why The Day Nursery Died." The article stated that officers of the society had begged the Star to print appeals for funding, but the Star declined. The newspaper was during this period in a sort of war with society secretary Wirt Steele, part of which seems to have centered on the criteria Steele applied to those seeking assistance from the society.
The Charity Organization Society of Seattle was experiencing financial difficulties during this period. Board meeting minutes from November 7, 1904, indicate that the organization had only $90 cash on hand. On November 14, 1904, the board agreed that board members should write individual letters to their friends asking for contributions to help the society’s work.
Experiment Reluctantly Abandoned
Charity Organization of Seattle president Austin Griffiths (1863-1952) reported in the organization’s November 1904 newsletter The Exponent:
“The experiment of a day nursery was reluctantly abandoned this year -- not for want of financial support so much as for want of specific demand under local conditions to justify the minimum expense of maintenance. Seattle is not yet sufficiently populous and its people are too widely scattered over its hills to make a day nursery a success in any single location in the city. Rents are prohibitory in central, downtown locations, and no other place is conveniently accessible to a significant number of working mothers. It should not be many years, however, before one or more day nurseries can be permanently maintained, and this experiment served useful ends” (p. 2).
By at least July 1908, St. Mark's Episcopal Church was operating a day nursery. In 1909, Rev. Mark Mathews (1867-1940) and a committee of women from Seattle's First Presbyterian Church founded Seattle Day Nursery, which was renamed Childhaven in 1985, and still (as of 2012) exists. The Charity Organization Society of Seattle is now -- following several name changes -- Wellspring Family Services.
