University of Alabama Takes Over Jefferson Hospitals

Well, here we have the beginning of the vast University of Alabama at Birmingham medical center and hospitals that exist today. I found this brief item from December 1944 in my wanderings through old issues of the Gadsden Times saved by my paternal grandmother Rosa Mae Wright. 

Founded by Josiah Nott and other physicians, the Medical College of Alabama operated in Mobile from 1859 until 1920. In that year the school moved to Tuscaloosa and functioned as a two-year basic sciences program until moved again to Birmingham in 1944. The four-year school opened in September 1945. Students who had finished in Tuscaloosa had to leave Alabama to finish their medical degrees. 

As this brief article notes, plans for the medical school and center in Birmingham were already underway. In 1943 the state legislature had passed the Jones Act to establish and fund a school. Location in Birmingham was chosen because the large patient populations at Jefferson and Hillman hospitals offered the greatest opportunities in the state for physician training and clinical practice. Over 670 employees at the two hospitals also provided a large beginning base for the school.

I've added some illustrations and other comments below. 

Gadsden Times 31 December 1944

Hillman Hospital ca. 1929

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama 

The building is now known as Jefferson Tower on the UAB campus. This card is postmarked December 23, 1958. The building had opened as Jefferson Hospital in December 1940 with 575 patient beds. The county facility greatly expanded medical care in the city. Hillman Hospital was located on the opposite side of the same block. The buildings became University Hospital and Hillman Clinic at some point after the school opened. 

This postcard in my collection has some interesting history on this side. The four-cent Abraham Lincoln stamp was issued in July 31, 1958; first class postage increased to that amount the next day.  

The original The Price is Right premiered on NBC-TV in 1956. A feature of the show was the "Home Viewer Showcase", which Wikipedia describes:

"The Price Is Right frequently featured a home viewer "Showcase", a multi-prize package for which home viewers were invited to submit their bids via postcard. The viewer who was closest to the actual retail price without going over won everything in the Showcase, but one item was sometimes handmade so the viewer could not check the price of all the items."

I was unable to find the lady who submitted this bid at Ancestry.com I wonder if she won....

Beulah Vee Wright at the State Archives

Last month I received a letter from Mary Taylor Peake, Assistant Registrar at the Alabama Department of Archives and History in Montgomery. In August 2020 our family had donated a sizeable amount of material related to Beulah Vee Wright, my dad's older sister who died in December 1939 just after her 18th birthday. Dad's mother Rosa Mae Wright kept many of Beulah Vee's personal items that filled a cedar hope chest. You can read more about her and the materials in blog posts here, here and here. 

Ms. Peake wrote to inform me and other family members that some of the items related to Beulah Vee are being shown through September 2027 in an exhibit Alabamians: Portraits of our State. The exhibit is located in the Temporary Exhibit Gallery of the Museum of Alabama, on the second floor of the Archives. She also provided me with the exhibit photographs seen below. 

Many thanks go to the Archives and staff members for accepting and processing  the Beulah Vee material and the scans provided to the family of many printed items such as notebooks and yearbooks. 

A few more comments are below. 

"Our new temporary exhibit, Alabamians: Portraits of our State, features examples of traditional portraiture, as well as advertisements, political ephemera, and informal photographs from the Archives’ collections. This 1930s Century Master studio camera was used by three photography studios in Montgomery between the 1930s and 1980s. Its final owner, Paul Robertson of Robertson Photography, purchased the camera in the 1950s and used it to photograph five Alabama governors!"

That's Montgomery native Nat King Cole in the wall poster featuring a syrup advertisement. You can see Beulah Vee's portrait on the wall in the background of both these photos. 

Birmingham's St. Vincent's Hospital on Postcards

In 2014 I posted an item about a photograph of St. Vincent's Hospital that appeared in a 1908 book Views of Birmingham. That photograph turned up on the second postcard included here. I thought I would discuss it and two others postcards of the hospital from my collection in this piece.

St. Vincent's, now a part of the UAB Health System, was founded in 1898 and occupied the building shown here in 1900. Within a few years the facility had begun serving over 1000 patients annually, paying and charity, white and African-Americans. Expansion began in the 1940s and continued in the 1970s and 1980s to produce the large hospital that exists today. You can see a 2008 photo here. 

More information about the hospital's beginnings can be found in Howard Holley's History of Medicine in Alabama (1982). An extensive history is Tom Wofford's The St. Vincent's Story: A Century of Caring 1898-1998 (1998). 

Some commentary is below the images. 

This card appears on the cover of the Wofford book mentioned above and is identified as ca. 1908. As seen below my copy was mailed and postmarked in Birmingham on January 28, 1909. I presume this one-cent Franklin stamp was the one issued in 1908 although the perforations don't match. Raphael Tuck & Sons was a business founded in 1866 in London and eventually moved into postcards. The "Oilette" series was introduced in 1903. 

According to Wikipedia, "In the night of 29 December 1940, London was heavily bombed and Raphael House was destroyed.^[2] Records of seventy-four years and 40,000 or more original pictures and photographs by the best artists were in ashes. In spite of having to start over, the company was soon making progress." The firm lasted until 1959 when a merger with two other companies formed the British Printing Corporation. 

The Souvenir Post Card Company operated in New York early in the 20th century. This one cent Franklin stamp has perforations around the perimeter and is thus the one issued in 1903. We can read the Birmingham postmark, sometime in September, but I can't make out the year. 

Via Ancestry.com I found Ella Tew, living at this address, in the 1900 and 1910 U.S. Census. The address "650 Montgomery Street" does not appear on Google Maps. 

"Tichnor Quality Views" were issued by the Tichnor Brothers of Boston, a graphic arts and printing company that operated from 1908 until 1987. This card, never mailed, must have been one of the firm's early ones. Whoever wrote the card kindly put a date on it: November 9, 1942.

Via Ancestry.com I found this photograph of Celia Reneau from the 1948 yearbook of Florence State Teachers College. According to Google Maps "472 North Pine Street" in Florence is no longer an active address. 

Wayne Rogers Gets "The Big Kick"

Back in 2020 I posted an item about the 1959 crime film Odds Against Tomorrow which has a couple of Alabama connections, one of them tenuous. The other Alabama connection appears about midway through the movie. Robert Ryan's character goes into a bar for a drink, and a soldier and his girl are horsing around. Ryan takes offense and the final result is a fight in which the soldier ends up on the floor. The soldier is played by none other than Wayne Rogers. 

He was born in Birmingham on April 7, 1933. After graduating from Princeton in 1954 and a stint in the U.S. Navy until 1956, Rogers began appearing in small roles in Hollywood. 

His IMDB credits begin with one listing in 1958 and several in  1959, when he made appearances on the TV soap opera Search for Tomorrow and as that guy in the bar in Odds. In the 1960's he had numerous roles in TV shows ranging from Have Gun Will Travel to Gunsmoke and Honey West. He even appeared with fellow Alabama native Jim Nabors on Gomer Pyle USMC. 

Of course, Rogers went on to great fame in the popular M*A*S*H TV show where 
he was a regular for three seasons 1972-1975. He also starred with Lynn Redgrave in the medical comedy House Calls [1979-1982]. He continued acting in
films and TV movies and shows until 2003. In one of those roles he played Alabama native and attorney Morris Dees in the 1996 film Ghosts of Mississippi. 
Rogers died on New Year's Eve 2015.

Of course, Rogers went on to great fame in the popular M*A*S*H TV show where he as a regular for three seasons 1972-1975. 

Recently I happened to watch an episode of the TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents as one does on hot summer days and it turned out to be the only appearance of Rogers on that program. The 37th episode of season 7, first broadcast 19 June 1962, is "The Big Kick" and one of ten written by suspense master Robert Bloch. His short story was published in 1959.  You know Robert Bloch, the guy who wrote the novel that served as inspiration for Hitchcock's movie Psycho. 

Rogers is joined in this episode by Brian Hutton [1935-2014] an actor who moved into directing such films as Where Eagles Dare and Kelly's Heroes. Anne Helm [b. 1938] had an acting career that lasted 45 years and included Broadway, film and numerous television performances. In "The Big Kick" these two play a pair of beatnik lovers always on the make for some dough to pay the bills. In the episode we get to see a poetry performance in a coffee shop and a party where the beatniks get together and share their wealth.

A straight-laced society type named Kenny [Rogers] shows up at the party, and Mitch tells Judy he likes hanging with the beatniks and always brings wine as his entrance fee. Mitch soon tells Judy to start making nice to Kenny, and she starts getting money from him. But Kenny is playing a different game, and since this story is from Robert Bloch you can imagine what that might be.

I'm going to leave the story at this point; you can read a longer piece on the episode here. 

Mitch and Judy listen to "Diagnosis" the poem recited in the coffee house.

Mitch introduces Judy to Kenny, the society cat. 

Kenny wines and dines poor Judy several times after they meet. 

And here comes Kenny's big kick. 

Warren Oates and Wayne Rogers in the "Angela" episode of Steve McQueen's series Wanted Dead or Alive  first broadcast January 9, 1960

Chamber of Horrors

Rogers as police sergeant Jim Albertson in this 1966 film

Richard Boone, Gale Garnett, and Wayne Rogers in "The Debutante" episode of Have Gun--Will Travel first broadcast 19 January 1963

 

Chloroform in Montevallo in 1848

General anesthesia using gases for surgery is one of America's great nineteenth century medical achievements. In early 1845 dentist Horace Wells used nitrous oxide to painlessly extract a tooth. In October 1846 dentist William T.G. Morton successfully demonstrated ether anesthesia in Boston during an operation by John Collins Warren. The Morton/Warren event soon made it's way around the world. The Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology outside Chicago maintains an extensive timeline that covers all sorts of anesthesia developments worldwide from ancient times until today. 

After a long search for an anesthetic without ether's smell and other side effects and lasting longer than nitrous oxide, Dr. James Young Simpson and colleagues in Edinburgh, Scotland, discovered chloroform in November, 1847. The following May, Dr. Andrews of Montevallo reported that he had used chloroform to amputate "a negro boy's leg, "immediately below the knee", while under the influence of this powerful agent. "[H]e declared he did not feel or know anything of the operation."

I have mentioned this event in Shelby County on a previous blog post about general anesthesia in Alabama and in an article I published in 1986. I found the Montevallo demonstration covered in a Montgomery newspaper item reprinted from the Tuscaloosa Observer, and I wanted to discuss it more here.

Since the "negro boy" patient is not named, I only had a "Dr. Andrews" in Montevallo to research. Luckily, I think I've tracked him down.

David Andrews is listed in the 1850 U.S. Census and living in Shelby County. He was a physician, 30 years old, and born in North Carolina. He was married to Harriet F. Embrey [b. 9 July 1823] and they had 5 children at that time, 3 daughters and 2 sons. She died on July 31, 1855, age 32 and is buried in the Montevallo Cemetery. According to an inventory of that cemetery, an infant son is buried there also. 

Also according to the 1850 U.S. Census--Slave Schedules Andrews was a slave owner. He had 5 slaves at that time, 2 adult males, a boy of 7 and 2 adult females. Thus Andrews was probably also a farmer; many physicians in the 19th century, especially in rural areas, needed additional income beyond what their practices could provide.

I have been unable to locate any more information on David Andrews, despite searches of census and cemetery records and American physician directories covering the period. Perhaps he left Alabama after his wife died. 

FURTHER READING

Wright AJ. Early Use of General Anesthesia in Alabama, 1847-1853. Ala J Med Sci 1986 July; 23(3):333-335

Montgomery Tri-Weekly and Flag Advertiser 30 May 1848

Source: Gale Historical Collections. 19th Century U.S. Newspapers database

The current Montgomery Advertiser was published under this title from January 1, 1847 until December 7, 1848.

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama 

Red Hot & Lovely in Gadsden in 1941

"A Torrid Extravaganza" the ad declares. "Daring Glamorous Beauties in Risque Dances." 

In Gadsden, Alabama, in 1941? Well! Let's investigate. 

In my wanderings through old issues of the Gadsden Times I've encountered many such advertisements for revue-type variety shows in Gadsden in the 1940s. I'll be doing future blog posts on some others. Let's take a look at the performers and other elements of this production which played in Gadsden on Sunday, February 23 [according to the ad] and on Monday, February 24 [according to the photo caption and article below].

The advertisement promises "Eight Headline Acts-Music-Romance-Beauty" and "Extra-Petite Annette" who will "Undress with Finesse." Alas, I could find no information on the Petite Annette. Also on view for audiences was a musical film, The Boys from Syracuse released in 1940 and based on the 1938 stage production by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart. 

The photo caption and brief article below give us some other details. The Three Ross Sisters were a trio of singers, dancers, acrobats and contortionists. Their heyday was the 1940s; they appeared in the 1944 musical Broadway Rhythm. You can see that performance on YouTube. By the end of the decade the ladies were married and ceased performing as a group. The Wikipedia entry has details on their performance career and lives. Robert Ripley isn't mentioned. 

As noted in the caption of the Ross Sisters' photograph, The "Red Hot and Lovely" show was produced by Harry Clark. The closest I came to finding information about him was a Wikipedia entry for Harry Clark, the actor. That individual was involved with a revue type entertainment in 1937, before beginning an acting career. The revue combination of music, dancing and sketches often stretched the limits of public propriety at the time; perhaps these two Clarks are the same.

Among the unnamed performers in the article were "12 Ziegfeld Girls" presumably from the revived Ziegfeld Follies and a "stage full of star performers" from radio, screen & Broadway stage. I guess that's the Ziegfeld dancers shown in the ad. 

As we're also informed in that article, the Perry Twins were a favorite of the Duke of Windsor. The Twins were "sensational dancers" apparently resident performers at the Savoy Hotel in London. The pair frequently performed for the Duke during the 1930s and early 1940s; he liked their combination of dancing and comedy. 

This show was touring the country in 1941. Via Newspapers.com I found numerous listings, including one for the Anniston Star 31 August 1941, and others ranging from West Virginia to Pennsylvania and Ohio. 

Gadsden Times Thursday, 20 February 1941

Source: CineMaterial

Hospital News from Gadsden in 1944

In 2023 I posted an item related to my visit to Huntsville Hospital in 1958. That admission for a tonsillectomy was documented in a Huntsville Times newspaper article published on June 10, 1958. I was listed along with numerous other individuals who were admitted, born or discharged at Huntsville Hospital and Fifth Avenue General Hospital. 

These listings may have been common at one time and here's another one from the Gadsden Times on January 16, 1944. Specific diseases and surgeries except tonsillectomies don't seem to be mentioned; we just get a listing of names, perhaps cities if not Gadsden and the vague "undergoing treatment" or "minor operation." The later Huntsville Times article even gave addresses. All these patients were in Holy Name of Jesus Hospital; I've included a postcard and a bit of history below. 

I would imagine these listings were useful to people like my grandmother Rosa Mae Wright, who read the Gadsden Times daily and watched the obituaries for anyone she knew and hadn't already heard about. I hope Alex Farley fully recovered from his operation like I did and got lots of ice cream in the process. 

Source: Gadsden Times 16 January 1944

In 1917 the Sisters of Divine Providence opened Gadsden General Hospital and operated it until 1925 when the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity took over and renamed it. The building above opened in 1931. In 1991 the facility was sold and renamed Riverview Regional Medical Center, which was bought by Prime Healthcare Services in 2015. 

Huntsville Times 10 June 1958