Bosworth, Louise Marion, 1881-1982

Louise Marion Bosworth was born on July 11, 1881, one of five children of Alfred Bosworth and Eleanora (Wheeler) Bosworth. She grew up in Elgin, Ill., where her father was president of the First National Bank. After attending Elgin Academy, she studied at Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Mass., (1900-1901), and at Mountain Seminary in Birmingham, Pa., (1901-1902). In 1902 Bosworth entered Wellesley College; she became president of the Philosophy Club, a house president, and manager of the senior play, and was graduated in 1907.

As the Women's Educational and Industrial Union Fellow (1907-1909), Bosworth participated in the WEIU's survey of incomes and expenditures of women workers. She published the results of this investigation, including detailed analyses of the finances of 450 wage earners in the city of Boston, as The Living Wage of Women Workers, a supplement to the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Philadelphia, 1911; see 331.2/074 in the Schlesinger Library book division). During this period Bosworth sought to live on her salary of $9.61 a week, was active on a number of WEIU committees, and took courses at both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Radcliffe College, where she studied economics.

In 1911, Bosworth worked for settlement houses in Chicago, where she received a certificate from the Chicago School of Philanthropy; in Traverse City, Michigan; and in Philadelphia, where she took part in a survey of available housing. She later published Housing Conditions in Main Line Towns (Philadelphia: Committee on Investigation of the Main Line Housing Association, 193?). In March 1912, she took a temporary post as county agent for the Ulster County (N.Y.) Agency for Dependent Children. In March 1914 she was in Chicago considering various jobs, and in May took a four-week course sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation. That October she took part in an investigation of living costs under the auspices of the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation. Details of the remainder of her life are sketchy. She lived and worked in St. Paul, Minnesota; New York City; Great Barrington, Massachusetts; Elgin, Illinois; and Washington, Connecticut. She was plagued with bouts of illness and often went to Gould Farm in Great Barrington to recover. She died in Connecticut on August 6, 1982.