Born: Linda Richards was born on July 27, 1841, the
youngest daughter of Sanford Richards, an itinerant
preacher, and his wife, Betsy Sinclair Richards.
After ten years as a
schoolteacher, began working as a nurse at Boston City
Hospital in 1870. She enrolled for training in 1872 at the
New England Hospital for Women and Children, run by female
physicians, for a one-year course based on the principles
established by Florence Nightingale. Linda received her
diploma on September 1, 1873, and went to work as night
supervisor at Bellevue Hospital in New York.
After attending Florence
Nightingale's training school at St. Thomas Hospital in
England in 1877, became superintendent of a new training
school at Boston City Hospital, which officially opened in
1878.
Worked in Japan for five
years beginning in 1886 to start a training school for
nurses. Back in the United States, worked as a visiting
nurse and helped train nurses to work with the mentally ill.
She retired in 1911 at age 70
when she wrote her autobiography, Reminiscences of Linda
Richards. She suffered a severe stroke in 1923 and lived the
remainder of her life at the New England Hospital for Women
and Children where she had done her first training. She died
on April 16, 1930 in Boston.
