DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Dallas Baby Camp. Now settle in, because this story starts with a problem — and ends with something that changed medicine in the Southwest forever. By the middle of the nineteenth century, medicine in the United States was moving forward, but not for everybody.
The field of pediatrics was lagging behind the rest, and when Texas passed a State Medical Practice Act in 1872, it didn't even mention the pediatric specialty. Children, it seemed, were an afterthought. As late as 1885, the only public hospital facility in all of Dallas was a small frame building on Lamar Street called City Hospital.
That's it. One frame building for a whole city's worth of sick and suffering. In 1897, Reverend R.C.
Buckner established a private children's hospital dedicated solely to the care of children, in association with Buckner's Orphan Home in Dallas. That was something. That was real progress.
But it had to close soon after for financial reasons. And just like that, the door shut again. Now here's where the story turns, and it turns on one woman.
From 1904 to 1913, May Forster Smith worked as a private-duty nurse at area hospitals in Dallas. Every day she saw what most people looked away from — poor infants suffering from dehydration and other maladies, too small and too fragile to fight without help. May didn't look away.
She called a meeting. She invited her fellow nurses to sit down together and identify a solution. That takes a certain kind of nerve, the quiet kind that outlasts the loud kind.
Smith and her colleagues convinced the Dallas Graduate Nurses Association in 1913 to endorse and form a baby camp — a place dedicated to treating small infants. And on April 6, 1913, the first baby camp in the Southwest, and only the third in the entire country, opened on the campus of Parkland Hospital. Originally housed in four tents supplied by the American Red Cross.
Four tents. That's where it started. The city's leadership recognized quickly that this wasn't a temporary fix — this was a necessity — and in 1914 they relocated the facilities to a small cottage on the hospital grounds.
Through the generosity of charitable organizations, the camp kept going, treating infants and educating new mothers in infant care. Then in 1929, T.L. Bradford donated the funds to build a larger facility on Maple Avenue, and the Baby Camp grew into something the city could lean on.
The final chapter of this particular story arrives in 1947, when the Baby Camp, Bradford Hospital, Children's Hospital, and Freeman Clinic came together as Children's Medical Center of Dallas — one of the largest pediatric providers in the nation. Four tents on a hospital campus. One nurse who called a meeting.
That's how it grew.
What the marker says
By the middle of the 19th century, medicine in the United States was developing; however, the field of pediatrics lagged behind. In 1872, Texas passed a State Medical Practice Act but failed to mention the pediatric specialty. As late as 1885, Dallas’ only public hospital facility was a small frame building on Lamar Street, known as City Hospital. By 1897, Reverend R.C. Buckner established a private children’s hospital dedicated solely to the care of children in association with Buckner’s Orphan Home in Dallas but had to close soon after for financial reasons. From 1904 to 1913, May Forster Smith, a private-duty nurse, worked at area hospitals. Seeing the plight of poor infants suffering from dehydration and other maladies, May invited her fellow nurses to a meeting to identify a solution. Smith and her colleagues convinced the Dallas Graduate Nurses Association in 1913 to endorse and form a baby camp to treat small infants. The first baby camp in the Southwest and third in the country opened on April 6, 1913 on the campus of the Parkland Hospital and was originally housed in four tents supplied by the American Red Cross. The city’s leadership quickly realized the continued need for the camp and relocated the facilities in 1914 to a small cottage on the hospital grounds. Due to the generosity of charitable organizations, the camp continued to provide care to infants and educate new mothers in infant care. In 1929, T.L. Bradford donated the funds to build a larger facility on Maple Avenue. In 1947, the Baby Camp, Bradford Hospital, Children’s Hospital, and Freeman Clinic came together as Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, one of the largest pediatric providers in the nation. (2012)