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Mary Richmond: Pioneer of Social Work

Mary Ellen Richmond was a pioneering social worker born in 1861 in Illinois. She was homeschooled until age 11 and then graduated high school at 16. In 1889 she took a job with the Baltimore Charity Organization Society, becoming their first female general secretary. In 1897 she gave a seminal speech calling for professional social work training schools. She helped establish networks of social workers and published influential books, theorizing social work methods still used today. Richmond never married and died of cancer in 1928, having established social work as a recognized profession.

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466 views12 pages

Mary Richmond: Pioneer of Social Work

Mary Ellen Richmond was a pioneering social worker born in 1861 in Illinois. She was homeschooled until age 11 and then graduated high school at 16. In 1889 she took a job with the Baltimore Charity Organization Society, becoming their first female general secretary. In 1897 she gave a seminal speech calling for professional social work training schools. She helped establish networks of social workers and published influential books, theorizing social work methods still used today. Richmond never married and died of cancer in 1928, having established social work as a recognized profession.

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Laura
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© © All Rights Reserved
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THE LIFE OF MARY

RICHMOND
Early life
Mary Ellen Richmond was born on August 5th, 1861
in Belleville, Illinois.
She was the second
eldest daughter of Henry
Richmond a carriage
blacksmith, and Lavinia
Harris Richmond, the
daughter of a prominent
Baltimore, Maryland,
jeweler and real estate
broker.
Childhood

 This education promoted critical thinking and social


activism in her. Richmond's grandmother and aunts were
also not fond of the traditional education system so Mary
Richmond was home-schooled until the age of eleven when
she entered a public school.

 She graduated from high school at the age of sixteen and


went with one of her aunts to New York city.

 Her aunt soon became ill and returned to Baltimore,


leaving Mary on her own at the age of seventeen.
Adulthood

 Later, Richmond applied for a job as Assistant Treasurer


with the Baltimore Charity Organization Society (COS) in
1889. The Charity Organization Societies in several cities
were the first organizations to develop a structured social
work profession, providing social services to the poor,
disabled and needy, especially children.

 The overall purpose of the charity organization societies


was to bring order to a disorganized and ineffective system
of alms giving by churches, charitable agencies, and
individuals.
Her ability to explain the organization’s mission
and purpose and raise money to support the
services that the organization provided resulted
in her being appointed as the first woman
general secretary of the COS.
It was during her historic speech
at the annual meeting of the
Nation Conference of Charities a
nd Correction
in 1897 that she articulated her
beliefs and called for schools to
train professional social workers,
calling her conference “
The Need of a Training Scho
ol in Applied Philanthropy
.”
Becoming famous

A few years after this speech, Richmond accepted


the head administrative position at the
Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity.

With the support of the foundation, she helped


establish networks of social workers and a
method by which they did their work.
She also began publishing her ideas in books

1899 1917 1922


Social Work…

Her ideas on social work were quite revolutionary for the


time and have made a resurgence after decades of an
approach which blamed the person for their problems.

These ideas
are now the basis for
current social work
education.
Her most celebrated book, Social
Diagnosis, was based on her
lectures and on her wide readings
in history, law, logic, medical
social work, psychology, and
psychiatry. Widely hailed as
evidence of the
professionalization of social
work, it was the first formulation
of theory and method in
identifying the problems of
persons.
Mary Ellen Richmond was one of the women who
influenced the direction of the social work
profession in its beginnings, being the conceptual
inventor, who theorized and systematized Social
Work and formalized its techniques and contents, all
before the American women had the right to vote.
Later life

In 1917, at 56, she published the first text of


Techniques and Methods of Social Work,
called Social Diagnosis. In 1922, six years
before he died, he published What is Social
Work Cases? Mary Richmond never married or
had any children, and died in New York in
1928 at age 67 due to cancer.

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