By Melissa Dombrowski, Bicentennial Intern, Class of 2018, History
Since 1924, Riley Hospital for Children has treated hundreds of thousands of children as part of the Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis.
From 1921 onward, Indiana University’s Board of Trustees has worked in collaboration with the James Whitcomb Riley Memorial Association (known today as the Riley Children’s Foundation) to construct one of the nation’s best-known hospitals for pediatric care.
The year 1921 was a big year for social legislation in Indiana. That year, the Indiana General Assembly passed seven laws which affected local hospitals and appropriated 11.5 million dollars for the use of state charitable and correctional institutions.
Based on recommendations made by the State Board of Charities, on March 11, 1921, legislators authorized and directed Indiana University’s Board of Trustees to establish a 200-bed hospital for children in Indianapolis which would operate as an official department of Indiana University.
As the Act stated, the buildings would be “especially designed and equipped for the application of the most approved methods in the diagnosis, and medical and surgical treatment of afflicted children,” and advantageously situated near Long Hospital and Indiana University School of Medicine.[1]
The initial idea for the hospital came from the friends of Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley. They wished to memorialize the popular writer following his death in 1916. Early in 1921, coinciding with the passage of the act establishing the hospital by the Indiana General Assembly, this group established the James Whitcomb Riley Memorial Association.
While Indiana University School of Medicine faculty member, Dr. Lafayette Page, is credited for the original idea of creating a children’s hospital to honor the poet [2], the members of the Indiana University Board of Trustees played a vital role in making this idea become a reality. The initial bill for the hospital was drawn up in January 1921 by a Board of Trustees sub-committee. The sub-committee consisted of Dr. Samuel E. Smith, Indiana University at Indianapolis Provost, Bloomington attorney Edwin Corr, and Judge Ira Coleman Batman.
Shortly after the Riley Hospital bill was passed by Indiana’s State Legislature in early March 1921, the Indiana University Board of Trustees and the James Whitcomb Riley Memorial Association took steps to create and then convene the Joint Executive Committee on April 2, 1921. The committee consisted of twelve persons, led by Indiana University President William Lowe Bryan, Ph.D. as Chairman, and the Association’s Hugh McK. Landon as President.
Five of the additional ten members came from the Riley Memorial Association and the remaining five members representing the Indiana University Board of Trustees–James W. Fesler, president of the Indiana Board of Trustees, Dr. Samuel E. Smith, George A. Ball, Benjamin Franklin Long, and Judge Ira Coleman Batman.
A real hero of the Joint Executive Committee, Batman had prepared the resolution and drew up the agreement that allowed the committee to come to fruition.
Upon his death ten years after the erection of Riley Hospital, the Joint Executive Committee declared, “Judge Batman’s service upon this committee has been characterized always by great wisdom and fairness, by an uncommon devotion to his responsibilities and by a helpful response to every request that has been made of him by this committee.”[3]
James Whitcomb Riley Memorial Association and Trustee, Indiana University Board of Trustees. Photo courtesy Riley Children’s Foundation
Until the reorganization of the committee in 1941 as the Association’s Board of Governors, the Riley Memorial Association and Indiana University Board of Trustees shared the responsibility of management, maintenance, and control of Riley Hospital. The membership of the new board continued to be composed of members elected from both respective entities.
However, a May 1941 progress report on the reorganization indicated that the Riley Memorial Association should “be concerned primarily with money-raising and money-investing,” and that “the University should be concerned with [the] management, maintenance, and control” of Riley Hospital.[4]
The collaborative effort to create the children’s hospital also helped satisfy an immense need afflicting Indiana’s medical system at that time. Up until its establishment, Indiana did not have a hospital which specialized in the treatment of children. A significant overcrowding issue plagued City Hospital and the Robert W. Long Hospital, the two hospitals near the Indiana University School of Medicine.
Even before Riley Hospital for Children opened, parents of sick children wrote to Indiana University to ask if their child could be admitted. In one letter, a concerned mother indicated that her child had been turned away from Long Hospital because there was already a long waiting list for treatment.[5]
The hospital also fulfilled a need for the medical school. In a 1923 letter, Dean Charles P. Emerson expressed the need for improvement in the medical school’s pediatrics department and how such teaching opportunities would benefit Indiana University.
Nine years earlier, during the construction of the Robert W. Long Hospital, Dean Emerson had also pointed out in the Indiana Bulletin of Charities and Corrections that undergraduate student nurses, learning on-the-job, were an integral part of the American healthcare system.[6]
Therefore, Riley Hospital would additionally prove an important resource for the training of pediatric doctors and nurses. The plans for the construction of the hospital also came amidst a nursing shortage so severe that it was deemed an “emergency” by the Indiana University Medical Center Finance Committee.
The James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children bill provided new opportunities for the training of pediatric nurses in connection with the already-established Indiana University nurse training school.
The legislation “authorized and empowered [the Board of Trustees] to establish and maintain in connection with said hospital a training school for child nursing, and an outpatient and social service department, for the purpose of conserving the health of the children of the state.”[7] Student nurses would serve a vital role in filling in gaps left by nursing shortages for decades.[8]
Through almost a century of collaboration between the James Whitcomb Riley Memorial Association (now known as the Riley Children’s Foundation) and Indiana University, Riley Hospital has grown immensely. Today, Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Health stands as one of the nation’s foremost pediatric hospitals, treating over 300,000 patients a year.[9]
Notes
[1] Harrison Burns and Samuel Grant Gifford, Burns’ Annotated Indiana Statues Supplement of 1921, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1921, pp. 927 – 931, available at: https://books.google.com/books?id=9W5CAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA927&lpg=PA927&dq=Indiana+Act+of+1921+Establishment+of+a+hospital+for+children&source=bl&ots=kJI6ptDYWr&sig=QlS1ik3B5Hh40DyakGy2jMPB6V8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf47WO7LfaAhViiOAKHVxQAf4Q6AEIMzAE#v=onepage&q=Indiana%20Act%20of%201921%20Establishment%20of%20a%20hospital%20for%20children&f=false
[2] Elizabeth J. Van Allen and Omer H. Foust (eds.), Keeping the Dream (James Whitcomb Riley Memorial Association, Indianapolis, IN, 1996), 14, IUPUI University Library Digital Collections, 2006, http://ulib.iupuidigital.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/JWRiley/id/3209/rec/38.
[3] Resolution by the Joint Executive Committee of the James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children, in the Indiana University Board of Trustees Minutes, 11 June 1934, Indiana University Archives and Indiana University Digital Collections Services, http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/archives/iubot/1934-06-07.
[4] Minutes of the Indiana University Board of Trustees, 30 May 1941, Indiana University Archives and Indiana University Digital Collections Services, http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/archives/iubot/1991-05-30.
[5] Robert E. Neff to Mrs. Richard Wagner, 1924, Box UA-073 #15, School of Medicine Records 1848 – 1968, Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives, IUPUI University Library.
[6] Letter of Charles P. Emerson, 1923, Box UA-073 #1, Office of the Dean Records, Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives, IUPUI University Library.
[7] [7] Harrison Burns and Samuel Grant Gifford, Burns’ Annotated Indiana Statues Supplement of 1921, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1921, 930, available at: https://books.google.com/books?id=9W5CAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA927&lpg=PA927&dq=Indiana+Act+of+1921+Establishment+of+a+hospital+for+children&source=bl&ots=kJI6ptDYWr&sig=QlS1ik3B5Hh40DyakGy2jMPB6V8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf47WO7LfaAhViiOAKHVxQAf4Q6AEIMzAE#v=onepage&q=Indiana%20Act%20of%201921%20Establishment%20of%20a%20hospital%20for%20children&f=false
[8] The Minutes of the Board of Trustees of the Indiana University Medical Center from October 28, 1940 records a report by Fern Coy, Assistant Director of Nurses’ Training, regarding a concern that the Medical Center could no longer allow student nurses to fill in for regular nursing staff due to a new rule from the National Public Health Association. Further research is needed to clarify how this rule applied to Riley Hospital and what action was taken by the board. Items to be Presented to the Executive Committee of the Indiana University Medical Center by the Administrator, 28 October 1940, Box UA-073 #15, Folder 17, School of Medicine Records 1848 -1968, Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives, IUPUI University Library.
[9] Riley Children’s Foundation, “Riley Hospital,” Rileykids.org, accessed 04/01/2018, http://www.rileykids.org/about/riley-hospital/#.WtFxVS7wbIV
Sources
Burns, Harrison and Samuel Grant Gifford, Burns’ Annotated Indiana Statues Supplement of 1921, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1921, pp. 927 – 931, available at: https://books.google.com/books?id=9W5CAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA927&lpg=PA927&dq=Indiana+Act+of+1921+Establishment+of+a+hospital+for+children&source=bl&ots=kJI6ptDYWr&sig=QlS1ik3B5Hh40DyakGy2jMPB6V8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf47WO7LfaAhViiOAKHVxQAf4Q6AEIMzAE#v=onepage&q=Indiana%20Act%20of%201921%20Establishment%20of%20a%20hospital%20for%20children&f=false
Items to be Presented to the Executive Committee of the Indiana University Medical Center by the Administrator, 28 October 1940, Box UA-073 #15, Folder 17, School of Medicine Records 1848 -1968, Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives, IUPUI University Library.
Letter of Charles P. Emerson, 1923, Box UA-073 #1, Office of the Dean Records, Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives, IUPUI University Library.
Minutes of the Indiana University Board of Trustees, 30 May 1941, Indiana University Archives and Indiana University Digital Collections Services, http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/archives/iubot/1991-05-30.
Neff, Robert E. to Mrs. Richard Wagner, 1924, Box UA-073 #15, School of Medicine Records 1848 – 1968, Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives, IUPUI University Library.
Resolution by the Joint Executive Committee of the James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children, in the Indiana University Board of Trustees Minutes, 11 June 1934, Indiana University Archives and Indiana University Digital Collections Services, http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/archives/iubot/1934-06-07.
Riley Children’s Foundation, “Riley Hospital,” Rileykids.org, accessed 04/01/2018, http://www.rileykids.org/about/riley-hospital/#.WtFxVS7wbIV
Van Allen, Elizabeth J. and Omer H. Foust (eds.), Keeping the Dream (James Whitcomb Riley Memorial Association, Indianapolis, IN, 1996), 14, IUPUI University Library Digital Collections, 2006, http://ulib.iupuidigital.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/JWRiley/id/3209/rec/38