Mary Elizabeth Hospital School of Nursing Scrapbook, ORG.77

This collection consists of a scrapbook that was originally compiled in 1944 and presented to Dr. Harold Glascock upon his retirement. Material was later added to the scrapbook to include information about nurses from more recent years as well.

Finding Aid prepared by: James O. Sorrell on 10 April 1992.
Revised by: Gwen Thomas Mays in 2009.

The Mary Elizabeth Hospital was started in a house on the corner of Halifax and Peace Streets, in Raleigh, North Carolina, by Dr. Harold W. Glascock. The hospital contained fifteen patient rooms, an operating room, an anesthetizing room, Superintendent's room, kitchen, dining room, reception room, and office. Dr. A. R. Tucker, who was Dr. Glascock's partner at the time, and was an Osteopath, had graduated with him in Medicine and Surgery in Atlanta in 1912. The hospital was named for Dr. Tucker's mother and Mrs. Tucker's mother, who were both named Mary; and for Dr. Glascock's mother and Mrs. Glascock's mother, who were both named Elizabeth.

At a reception on March 6, 1914, at which 400 visitors were received, The Mary Elizabeth Hospital was formally opened. A training school for nurses was started immediately and Miss Vannie Hawley was the first student. The hospital was incorporated on August 6, 1915. By 1919 plans were being made for a new building. Land was purchased on Wake Forest Road in Raleigh, and Dr. Glascock drew up the plans and made the blueprints for the building. Dr. Tucker severed connection with the hospital at this time. Miss Harriet Lisowski was the first Superintendent of Nurses in the new hospital, having come from the Mayo Clinic. Miss Alexander Stewart was the operating room nurse, coming from Virginia, and had been an Army Nurse in World War I. A Mary Elizabeth nurse gave the first dose of penicillin to be administered in Raleigh, and Mary Elizabeth had the first radium, and the only radium for a number of years, in Raleigh.

One hundred and forty six nurses graduated from the program, many of whom served during the Second World War in the Army or Navy. In 1950, the Joint Committee on the Standardization of Nursing ruled that nursing training schools should be connected to a hospital that averaged fifty patients a day. Mary Elizabeth Hospital had forty-nine patient beds, and thus did not meet the requirement and closed in September 1950.
In the mid-to late 1960s, the doctors were realizing that Mary Elizabeth Hospital was no longer the modern facility that it had once been. New and sophisticated technologies and medical advances demanded a larger building with better equipment and much more space. The doctors of Mary Elizabeth Hospital, always striving to give the best service to the surrounding community, decided that it was necessary to build a new hospital on a new site that would accommodate future expansion.

The hospital was sold in 1970 to Charter Medical of Macon,Georgia, and a year later, the wheels were set in motion to build a hospital that would accommodate 150 patient beds. Legal battles with Rex and Wake Med Hospitals, which tried to block Mary Elizabeth Hospital's expansion plans, delayed the construction of the new hospital for six years. Charter Medical was unable to afford the delays, and after five years, Mary Elizabeth Hospital was sold to Hospital Corporation of America. Finally, the new hospital was built farther up on Wake Forest Road in 1978. On June10,1978 the doors to the new hospital officially opened, and Mary Elizabeth Hospital was officially closed. The new hospital was named Raleigh Community Hospital to reflect the past and future community role of the hospital. Many of the doctors and staff members made the transition to Raleigh Community Hospital, which became Duke Raleigh Hospital in 1998.

Collection Contents

Glascock, Harold W.

Mary Elizabeth Hospital School of Nursing

Mary Elizabeth Hospital

Raleigh Community Hospital

Duke Raleigh Hospital

Nursing

Army Nurses

Nursing students

Nursing schools

Navy Nurses

Raleigh (N.C.)