People's Institute and Portland Free Dispensary

The People’s Institute was organized in 1904 to improve living conditions for the women and children in the northern end of Portland. The impetus for the Institute was a report by Valentine Prichard, supervisor of the public school kindergartens and principal of a training school for kindergarten teachers. This report, given in 1902 to Dr. Edgar P. Hill, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, along with Caroline Ladd and her daughter Helen Ladd Corbett, described the deplorable conditions of the women and children in north Portland Unable to provide even the bare necessities for their children, single mothers and their offspring lived in dark, unkempt rooming houses and tenements. Children, surrounded by immorality, often turned to crime, growing up idle and becoming a menace to society. Miss Prichard and a staff of workers visited homes to establish the needs of the women and children and to decide what could be done to help them and to establish the aims of the organization.

The Ladd family donated land at Fourth and Burnside Streets to construct a building for the People’s Institute. The first floor housed the Men’s Resort, a mission that had already been established by the church, and the second floor housed services for women and children. Caroline Corbett was appointed to form a club to support the effort, and Valentine Prichard was pressed into service as the Institute’s organizer. The first meeting was held 1904 November 11; Prichard was voted in as supervisor, officers were elected, and the People’s Institute Settlement Work was established. Dr. Hill realizing that the work would need more than one church for support, opened membership to all women who would aid the organization financially or through service.

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