BIOGRAPHIES
Last update: January 5 th Jane Addams
(September 6, 1860 - 1935) U.S.A.
Social reformer Born in Cedarville, Illinois, Jane Addams graduated from Rockford (Ill.) Female Seminary in 1881 and was granted a degree the following year when the institution became Rockford College. The death of her father in 1881, her own health problems, and an unhappy year at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania left her depressed and aimless for some years. She traveled in Europe in 1883-85, but neither there nor during her stay in Baltimore (1885-87) did she find a vocation. In 1887-88 Addams returned to Europe with a Rockford classmate and close friend, Ellen Gates Starr. On a visit to the Toynbee Hall settlement house (founded 1884) in London's East End, Addams' vague leanings toward reform work crystallized. The two women returned to the United States and settled in Chicago. By September 1889 they had moved into the decrepit residence, built by Charles Hull in 1856, that came to be known as Hull House. The building was located in the midst of a teeming immigrant ward. Eventually the settlement included 13 buildings, with literary clubs, art gallery, a summer school for women, a day nursery, a gymnasium, a community kitchen, a kindergarten, public baths, a library, a chemist, an employement bureau, a cooperative apartment for young working women, and a Juvenile Protective Association working on issues of sexual morality, prostitution and drug abuse. | |
|
