Robbins, Jane Elizabeth

Extract

Robbins, Jane Elizabeth (28 December 1860–16 August 1946), settlement house worker and physician, was born in Wethersfield, Connecticut, the daughter of Richard Austin Robbins, a prosperous seed merchant who was active in the Congregational church and also a member of the Connecticut legislature, and Harriet Welles. Jane Robbins belonged to the first generation of women to graduate from college in significant numbers. After attending Smith College for the 1879–1880 academic year, she worked for five years as a teacher in Kentucky and New Jersey. Partly out of a desire to help the poor, she then decided to become a physician. Even though she had a lifelong loyalty to Smith, she chose to enter the New York Infirmary’s Women’s Medical College in 1887, graduating in 1890. She then interned for a year at the New York Infirmary before setting up a medical practice in the Italian ghetto around New York’s Mulberry Street....