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Biographies

Early Women Hospital Administrators

E. Muriel Anscombe (d. 1959)

Born in Canada, E. Muriel Anscombe attended Western Reserve University and Teachers College, Columbia University. A registered nurse, Anscombe joined the staff of the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis in 1925 as director of Nursing. In January 1926 Anscombe became superintendent of the Hospital, responsible for the day-to-day operation of the institution. In May 1938 Anscombe suffered a severe stroke. Though her salary was continued through part of 1939, Anscombe was terminated by the Hospital’s president in December 1938. Anscombe returned to Canada in 1939, and turned to teaching and writing about hospital administration.

Anscombe was a charter fellow of the American College of Hospital Administrators and an honorary life member of the American Hospital Association. She served as president of the Midwest Hospital Association and wrote numerous articles about hospital administration for publications such as Modern Hospital, Hospital Management Magazine, and the American College of Surgeons Bulletin. In 1959 Anscombe published a novel entitled Jean’s Tragic Dilemma. Set in a fictional large hospital in a fictional mid-western town, the book explored the challenge faced by the heroine, a hospital administrator, of marriage versus career. Many staff members of the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis felt the book was autobiographical, complete with thinly veiled, uncomplimentary portraits of several hospital staff and board members. Muriel Anscombe died of cancer in Detroit on December 14, 1959 at the age of 71.

Florence E. King (1896 - 1978)

Florence King joined the staff of the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis as a secretary in 1926 and was appointed assistant superintendent in October 1936. After the superintendent E. Muriel Anscombe was incapacitated by a stroke in 1938, King assumed the role of acting superintendent. In November 1939 King was officially named administrator of the hospital, a position she held until her retirement in 1952. Under the leadership of King, Jewish Hospital of St. Louis was the first in the city to adopt Social Security and the 40-hour work week in 1950. The other hospital administrators in St. Louis publicly censured King for having taken such action. Other hospitals in the area did not implement the 40-hour work week for another three years.

King was one of 48 women recognized by the Group Action Council of St. Louis as a Woman of Achievement in 1947. At the time King was one of the few women in the United States running a large urban hospital and the only woman serving on the board of the American Hospital Association. King also served as president of the Midwest Hospital Association and the Missouri Hospital Association. After her retirement, King moved to California, where she died in May 1978.

Estelle D. Claiborne (1889 - 1986)

Estelle D. Claiborne was born in DeCaturville, Missouri on December 6, 1889. She moved to St. Louis to study nursing at the Washington University School of Nursing, from which she graduated in 1915. During the First World War, Claiborne served with Base Hospital 21 in Rouen, France from 1917 to 1919, and as chief nurse to the American Ambulance Train No. 53 for six months in 1919. Claiborne was decorated for her service at a British casualty clearing station with the Royal Red Cross First Class by the British government, in addition to the Victory Medal given to her by the British Command. The French government recognized her valor during the war with the Verdun medal.

Claiborne served as executive assistant at Barnes Hospital from 1921 to 1923 and served as Administrator of Shriner’s Hospital for Crippled Children before her appointment as Superintendent of St. Louis Children’s Hospital in 1925. Claiborne served in that position for almost 30 years, retiring in December 1954. She oversaw the addition of a fire-proof addition to the Hospital in the 1920s, the addition of the Child Guidance Clinic and the Metabolism Ward in the 1930s, and the addition of the Premature Baby Center (the first of its kind in Missouri) in the late 1940s.

Claiborne was a life member of the American Hospital Association, a fellow of the American College of Hospital Administrators and a former officer in the Missouri State Hospital Association. She was also active in the Hospital Council of St. Louis, the Midwest Hospital Association and the Social Planning Council of St. Louis.

Lilly D. Hoekstra (1908 - 1981)

Born in Gumbo (Chesterfield), Missouri in 1908, Lilly Hoekstra attended the Washington University School of Nursing, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1932. From 1940 to 1943 Hoekstra served as assistant administrator at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. She then enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps and served for two years as chief nurse of the 106th General Hospital in England. Hoekstra was discharged with the rank of Captain. After the war she studied hospital administration at the University of Chicago. From 1949 to 1951, Hoekstra served as general administrator of Insular Hospitals in Puerto Rico.

After serving for five years as assistant administrator of the St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Hoekstra succeeded Estelle D. Claiborne as administrator of the institution in January 1955. She served in that position, managing the daily operations of the hospital, until she requested early retirement in 1970. At that time the St. Louis Children’s Hospital Board of Trustees, following national trends in hospital management, created a full-time salaried position of President of the Hospital. The President would assume managerial responsibility for the hospital under the director of the Board of Trustees, with an administrator working under him.

Hoekstra, a Fellow in the American College of Hospital Administrators, was active in the Hospital Association of Metropolitan St. Louis and the Children’s Hospitals Executives Council, a group which included representatives from pediatric teaching hospitals throughout the United States, Canada, and England. Lilly Hoekstra died of cancer on December 14, 1981.

 

The St. Louis Maternity Hospital, founded in 1908, affiliated with the Washington University School of Medicine and St. Louis Children’s Hospital in the early 1920s. A new hospital building was opened in 1927 near the medical school and the other affiliated hospitals. Isabelle M. Baumhoff, R.N. served as Superintendent of the St. Louis Maternity Hospital from 1927 until 1931. She was succeeded by Mary J. Keith, who served in that position from 1931 until 1943. Kitty McKelvey followed Mrs. Keith as Superintendent. Dorothy Rogers, assistant superintendent of St. Louis Children’s Hospital from 1926 to 1930, served as the first Superintendent of the McMillan Hospital in 1930-31.

Laura Hornback (1886-1980), a 1916 graduate of the Washington University Training School for Nurses, was the first administrator of the Pike County Hospital in Louisiana, Missouri. She served from the hospital’s opening in 1928 until her retirement in the fall of 1946. Hornback had served as chief of nursing for St. Louis Children’s Hospital prior to running the Pike County Hospital.

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