In 1901 Bloomington was stunned when the Deaconess nurses announced that they were leaving the hospital in Bloomington. The Deaconesses had entered into a contract to provide nurses for the hospital and to have a nursing school at the hospital. They had been working under this contract for four years, but the conditions of the contract had not been met by the board of the hospital. Deaconess Hospitals existed all over the United States, and the nurses in Bloomington worked out of the Chicago branch of that order.
The hospital needed to be expanded so that services could be efficiently provided and so that the nursing students could have a wide variety of experiences at the hospital. The board of the Bloomington Deaconess Hospital had agreed to make the necessary changes to the hospital four years earlier, but had not taken any action on the improvements. In 1901 the hospital was able to serve only surgical patients and the student nurses needed other types of patients to have meaningful training at the hospital.
Additionally, the hospital was not fitted with running water anywhere but in the basement of the building. The nurses were required to carry water from the basement to the upper floors for all purposes. They were then required to sterilize the water using gas stoves that gave off gaseous odors throughout the hospital because there was no piped in gas for the hospital. (The gas had to remain inside the building in containers. Very dangerous for both the nurses and the patients!)
The nurses lived at the hospital, and conditions for them were very cramped. This photo from Illustrated Bloomington, 1896 demonstrates the high regard in which the nurses were held. Please note that the name of this nurse is not given, she is merely "nurse." What many people then and now didn't know was that Deaconess nurses were not paid for their work. They were volunteers. So not only were they not recognized for their freely given service, they were not provided with modern conditions in which to do that work.
Abram Brokaw was of course the great benefactor of the Deaconess Hospital. In 1901 he gave $10,000 to bring the hospital up to snuff and make it possible for the nurses to continue their work ministering to the people of Bloomington. The hospital was renamed in his honor and continued under that name until a merger with the Mennonite Hospital. Work began almost immediately on a new building for the hospital and commitments by local doctors to be lecturers in the nursing school were given again. The nursing school had begun its work in 1897, graduating its first class of nurses in 1899: Daisy Hayes, Eva Knowles, Etta Buckles and Mrs. H C Lee. Mrs. John Ropp was the superintendent of the hospital in 1899 and Miss Mary Jefferson was the head of nursing in 1901.