Did you know that the first women to incorporate a business in Los Angeles were Daughters of Charity. They have since played a pivotal role in shaping the quality of health services for the county’s indigent sick. As hospitals transformed from social welfare institutions to medically oriented businesses in the late nineteenth century, they developed innovative business strategies to retain their historic leadership position in the city’s hospital industry without relinquishing their religious commitment to care for the poor. This work provides new insights into women’s entrepreneurial activities and social advocacy work in the West, while documenting the rich heritage of a religious community and its impact on nursing history.
These are just a few of the highlights of a a new book “Daughters of Charity: Women, Religious Mission, and Hospital Care in Los Angeles, 1856-1927”
Kristine Ashton Gunnell, Ph.D.is a Research Scholar at UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women.
Paperback: $18.00 ISBN 978-1-936696-06-2
“Kristine Gunnell’s volume is meticulously researched. She presents the largely untold story of the Daughters of Charity in health care in the Western United States in a balanced, perceptive, and highly readable form. It is a valuable contribution to the long tradition of religious women in hospital service.”
Louise Sullivan, D.C., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Niagara University
“An excellent addition to the emerging scholarship concerning the history of Catholic nuns and sisters. Grounding her subjects in the tenets of women’s history and placing their lives within the context of the surrounding economic and political forces of Los Angeles, Kristine Gunnell makes a sophisticated contribution to our understanding of one of the most widely recognized sisterhoods in the United States.”
Anne M. Butler, Trustee Professor, Emeritus, Utah State University
Author of Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850-1920
Tags: Daughters of Charity, health care
