Hay, George A.

From 1925 to 1970, the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania overcame significant obstacles, adapting to both survive and prosper in a dramatically evolving society. In 1930, the school and hospital moved to a new and larger facility in East Falls, then a burgeoning middleclass neighborhood in northwest Philadelphia. The excitement and optimism resulting from the move was quickly tempered, however, by the Great Depression, which left the institution in financial turmoil. Added to that, in 1935, an inspection of the school, hospital and its governance conducted by the Council on Medical Education and Hospitals of the American Medical Association cost WMC its membership in the Association of American Medical Colleges temporarily. The College also explored the financial and administrative benefits of merging with at least two women’s hospitals in the Philadelphia area; Kensington Women’s Hospital and the Woman’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

George A. Hay served as comptroller for WMC during the mid-twentieth century, participating in major administrative decisions, particularly in the early1940s and 1960s. Hay was involved in a massive administrative reorganization in 1942, exploring the benefit of mergers with Kensington Women’s Hospital and the Woman’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and he served on the Committee on Admissions Policies, which decided in 1970 that WMC should admit male students and change its name to Medical College of Pennsylvania.

Sarah Logan Wister Starr was a local socialite and philanthropist, born into Philadelphia’s famous Wister family, who served as president of WMC’s Board of Corporators until 1941. Together with Dean Martha Tracy and Vida Hunt Francis, an administrator, Starr led the institution through both periods of growth and financial difficulty. A dedicated benefactor, Starr spearheaded fundraising campaigns to finance WMC’s 1930 relocation to East Falls, a newly developed neighborhood in northwest Philadelphia, and to suppress the financial effects of the Great Depression.

Doctor Ellen Culver Potter graduated from WMC in 1905 and went on to a distinguished career. Potter devoted time to missions in New York City’s Chinatown and Norwich, Connecticut, opened a private practice in Germantown in Philadelphia and, in 1920, became the head of Pennsylvania’s Child Health Division. In 1923, she was appointed Secretary of Welfare in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Potter eventually returned to WMC to join the faculty and served as acting president in the 1940s.

Bibliography:

Peitzman, Steven J, MD. A New and Untried Course: Woman’s Medical College and Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1850-1998 . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000.

Pioneer-Pacesetter-Innovator: The Story of the Medical College of Pennsylvania . Princeton: The Newcomen Society in North America, 1971.

From the guide to the George A. Hay collection of administrative files of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, Bulk, 1925-1965, 1890-1970, (Drexel University: College of Medicine Legacy Center)