Finding Her Way
Hamilton was born in New York in 1869 and raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where she was homeschooled by her well-to-do family. At 17, she attended Miss Porter’s Finishing School for Young Ladies in Farmington, Connecticut for two years.Returning to Indiana, Hamilton studied at the Fort Wayne College of Medicine, then attended the University of Michigan Medical School in 1892. When she graduated, she worked at hospitals to gain clinical experience. However, she decided that starting her own practice was not her true passion.
Hamilton returned to the University of Michigan and briefly worked as a lab assistant. She then went to Europe for further studies in bacteriology and pathology.
Hull House
Hull House was founded in 1889 on the Near West Side of Chicago as a settlement house for European immigrants. Young women staffed the house to assist immigrants by teaching them history, the arts, and domestic skills.
Hamilton found her true calling living among the working-class population. She came upon people suffering from typhoid and tuberculosis. She also found immigrants who contracted job-related illnesses, such as lead and mercury poisoning.
According to Hamilton’s 1943 autobiography, “Exploring the Dangerous Trades,” what disturbed her the most was that employers were not held accountable when their workers suffered injuries or illnesses on the job. She wrote that, since many of the factory workers during that time were immigrants, they were afraid to speak up. Moreover, their employers saw them as expendable.
Hamilton knew in her heart that she had to do something to change the risks that factory workers were forced to endure, so she took up industrial medicine.
“Back in those early years I used to despair of relief for the overworked, underpaid immigrant laborers, who took with hopeless submission whatever was given them, [and] who rarely ever dreamed of protesting, much less rebelling,” Hamilton wrote in her autobiography. “It was they who did the heavy, hot, dirty, and dangerous work of the country. In return for it they met with little but contempt from more fortunate Americans.”
At that time, little research on industrial medicine was conducted in the United States as the factory owners deemed their workplace better than European factories. But Hamilton learned European factories had better safety measures in place. She wrote reports on industrial hygiene based on her European studies.
Occupational Disease
Hamilton’s efforts paid off. In 1910 Hamilton was appointed medical investigator for the Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases, the first government body of its type ever formed. She spent the next several years conducting investigations at workplaces across the country.She pioneered an extensive investigative method where she would go anywhere to interview employees to gather as much information as possible. When she was 50, Hamilton risked her life to climb down into a mine.
In 1919, Hamilton was offered an assistant professor position at the newly formed Department of Industrial Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Before she retired in 1935, Hamilton became known as the country’s leading expert in lead poisoning. She also helped develop safer industrial practices when handling toxins like TNT, mercury, and carbon monoxide.
Hamilton passed away just months before the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) was signed into law in 1970. The year before Hamilton died at 101, President Richard Nixon publicly praised her lifetime contributions. It’s been noted that Hamilton developed the framework for OSHA that still serves as the standard for workplace safety today, and the basis for worker’s compensation laws.
