Innovations - Marion Spear and Linda Richards

Innovations at the Kalamazoo State Hospital

This is a glass enclosed case with two large framed photographs.  One photograph is Marion Spear and the other is Linda Richards.  Under the framed photos are several smaller black and white photos of students in the occupational therapy and nursing programs at the Kalamazoo State Hospital.  There are also 4 pieces of ceramic art created by patients.  On the floor of the case are the diploma, plate and nusring cap that belonged to a nursing student.  

Marion Spear

In the early years of the 20th century, a new approach to the treatment of mental and physical illnesses began with the observation that patients who had simple tasks to do seemed to improve. This pioneering idea was the early beginnings now known as Occupational Therapy or OT. One of the early OT pioneers was Marion Rebecca Spear, who helped establish, define, and enlarge the profession while setting standards for teaching and learning.

Miss Spear was born in Massachusetts in 1893. After finishing her degree at the Massachusetts Normal Art School, she accepted a job as an Assistant Occupational Therapist. In 1918, she took over the position of Director of Occupational Therapy at Kalamazoo State Hospital.

One of her first duties happened at Christmastime in 1918 at the Gilmore Brothers store, where she presided over a sale featuring the work of State Hospital patients. Items offered for sale included baskets, hand-woven rugs, knitted sweaters, and curtains. “By getting patients interested in this sort of thing,” she explained, “we succeed in diverting their minds from their afflictions, and it has been found to be of great benefit to them.” Patients also produced items for the hospital’s use, such as furniture, rugs, curtains, mattresses, brooms, brushes and clothing; they could even repair shoes. According to the Director’s Report for 1918, patients wove 15,000 yards of toweling and canned over 30,000 gallons of fruit and vegetables. They also staged elaborately-costumed plays and pageants with all-patient casts.

During this time, Spear was adding to her list of “waste material” projects—things that could be made at little or no expense. By 1939, she had enough ideas to produce three small, hand-bound and hand-illustrated volumes of instructions for projects, all organized by material such as wrapping and wallpaper, milk bottle tops, postage stamps and flour sacks.

One of Spear’s early goals was to invest in more supplies and equipment for staff to use with the patients, including woodworking tools and a pottery kiln. Spears noted the shortage of qualified staff, so starting a school of Occupational Therapy for the hospital became her primary focus. Permission to do so was not immediate, but in July 1922, the school was established, one of only five in the nation, with Spear as its first director. Initially focusing on training for work with psychiatric patients, the program gradually expanded to include clinical training for work in tuberculosis, orthopedics, and pediatrics.

In 1939 the program received full accreditation from the American Medical Association and in 1944 the program moved from the Kalamazoo State Hospital to Western Michigan College, now Western Michigan University, and was headed by Spear as the college’s newest associate professor.

Spear retired in 1958, having worked forty years in occupational therapy in Kalamazoo. She turned her attention to working on the history of her field, producing Fifty Years of Occupational Therapy in Michigan 1911-1961. The book was typed, printed, and bound by patients at the Kalamazoo State Hospital.

Marion Spear died in 1990 at age 97. Her memory and influence are still alive at WMU’s OT Department, where each year a student is selected to receive the Marion R. Spear Award for “outstanding interest, dedication, and commitment to the goals of occupational therapy and for demonstrating potential for making future contributions to the profession.”

Linda Richards

Linda Richards holds the honor of being the first student to graduate from nursing school in the United States and is considered to be the first professionally trained nurse. She is credited for establishing nursing training programs in the United States and Japan, as well as creating the first system for keeping individual medical records for hospitalized patients.

Her experience with nursing her dying mother awakened Richards' interest in nursing. In 1860, Richards met George Poole, to whom she became engaged. Not long after their engagement, Poole joined the Green Mountain Boys and left home to fight in the American Civil War. He was severely wounded in 1865, and Richards cared for him until his death in 1869. Inspired by these losses, she dedicated her life to train and work as a nurse.

Linda describes her nursing training:

“We rose at 5.30 a.m. and left the wards at 9 p.m. to go to our beds, which were in little rooms between the wards. Each nurse took care of her ward of six patients both day and night. Many a time I got up nine times in the night; often I did not get to sleep before the next call came. We had no evenings out, and no hours for study or recreation. Every second week we were off duty one afternoon from two to five o'clock. No monthly allowance was given for three months.”

Upon graduating in 1873, she moved to New York City, where she was hired as a night supervisor at Bellevue Hospital. While working there, she created a system for keeping individual records for each patient, which was to be widely adopted both in the United States and in the United Kingdom.

From 1906 to 1909, Linda served as the Superintendent of nurse training at the Kalamazoo State Hospital. The Linda Richards Memorial Home for Nurses was built on the hospital campus in 1931 to serve as a dormitory for students enrolled in the nursing program. The nursing school was accredited in 1892 and operated until 1947. During its 55 years of operation, the program graduated a total of 733 nurses.