Museum Corner October 2021
The location of the community’s first hospital is circled on this 1892 Sanborn map. The small hospital utilized an existing building located one block north of the square at the southwest corner of Locust (14th) and High (I) Streets.
Community-minded citizens created first hospitals
By Becky Buher, published in the Times-Mail newspaper Oct. 6, 2021
In the 1800s, the sick or injured were taken care of where people lived. When necessary, local doctors would arrive by horse and take care of needs as best they could. Families cared for their own, neighbors helped and local women might help care for the sick or serve as a midwife. But what would happen if the sick or injured had no family or no place to recuperate?
In Bedford, Dr. Samuel A. Rariden and Mrs. Lizzie Dunihue were two local citizens who served the sick and injured and could be depended upon to answer needs, day or night.
Dr. Rariden, whose household included a large family, domestic help and lodgers, lived in a house located at 1117 Locust (14th) Street. He was a physician who began in the 1850s and also preached in the Methodist Episcopal church near his home.
Lizzie Hammersley became Mrs. Dunihue when she married William Dunihue in 1875. Their home was established at 1127 Broadway (16th) Street. William’s occupation was later recorded as real estate. His parents were early Bedford businessman Alexander Dunihue and Anne McLane Dunihue.
Mrs. Lizzie Dunihue was known to bring sick people into her home so it must have been a full household indeed. She must have found taking care of the sick in her own home to be difficult, looked for a better option, and this became the genesis of Lawrence County’s first public hospital.
Sometime in the 1880s, she told Dr. Rariden there was a two-room house located near the southwest corner of Locust (14th) and High (I) Streets. The house had once been used as a school for local children of color.
Dr. Rariden and Mrs. Dunihue looked at the house and found it quite suitable to use as a hospital in emergencies.
It could accommodate the accidents that happened in limestone mills, quarries, on the railroad, farming and elsewhere.
Mrs. Dunihue enlisted the aid of the women of Bedford. She promoted the importance of an emergency hospital and let people know donations were needed to get the hospital started. Women donated sheets, towels, washcloths and a few beds.
Bandages had to be purchased so Dr. Rariden and Mrs. Dunihue got the men of Bedford to donate money. As it happened, there was a carnival being held in Bedford during that time, and local women created a benefit stand to raise additional money.
As time went on, citizens of Bedford gave aid for hospital maintenance. Years later, Lizzie’s son, Albert, would remember the hospital and his part in it. He told of being chore boy for his mother and running errands. The hospital continued for some time with Dr. Rariden at its head and Mrs. Dunihue as his loyal aid.
Dr. Rariden died in 1897, and by 1904, practicing physicians, Dr. John T. Freeland and Dr. R. B. Short, saw the need for something bigger than the two-room house.
They found a two-story frame house at 708 16th Street that had been the home of banker, Thomas Malott, who had moved to Abilene, Kansas, about ten years before. They leased the old Malott house and set it up as Lawrence Hospital. It appears the doctors pledged most of the surgical equipment themselves. Mrs. Dunihue continued to give her spare time to attend and care for the sick, donated her nursing talents to the town physicians at any hour and was known as the local Florence Nightingale. She organized the Dorcas Society, which enlisted townspeople to aid in clothing donations and to help with the Lawrence Hospital.
Records show that in 1905, the city council voted to donate $25.00 per month for the upkeep of the hospital. The limestone industry operators assisted financially and John A. Rowe represented that industry on the hospital board.
Next month, you can read about the third hospital in Bedford. In 1908, Mrs. Dunihue was appointed the matron at what would be called the New City Hospital. Mrs. Dunihue died in 1915. She was a widow, aged 69. Dr. Freeland signed the death certificate. Having done so much in her lifetime to aid and assist, the occupation listed on the death certificate was recorded as “housekeeper.”
Source: ILCO Builders magazine, published by the Indiana Limestone Company, Inc., Volume 2, No. 4, April, 1951, and local newspaper accounts.