By Nancy Miller Chenier
The year is 1900. The place is Lowertown Ottawa. Smallpox cases are quarantined on Porter’s Island as well as in the community. Lizzie Ritchie is living at the Lady Stanley Institute for Trained Nurses at the north east corner of Rideau and Wurtemburg streets. This young woman from a farm near Pakenham has decided to become a nurse. She is 23 years old and is in her second and final year of training at the first nursing school in Ottawa.
Institute for Trained Nurses 1901 LAC
At the Lady Stanley Institute, she abides by the strict rules of the school that include certain times for meals, restricted outside visitors and being in her own room by 10 each evening. She is working 12- hour shifts in the nearby Protestant General Hospital or if directed by the Superintendent, with private patients in the community. She now receives $8 per month, a raise from the $5 per month of her first year. If she does private duty or work in contagious diseases, the Institute charges $2.00 per day for her services. Because the Protestant General Hospital adjoins an isolation hospital, the student nurses receive training in the methods for isolation from contagious diseases.
A year later, Elizabeth Ritchie is 24 years old, a graduate nurse and still lodging at the Lady Stanley Institute. By December 26th of 1901, the Ottawa Journal reports that she is working on Porter’s Island and that day is distributing donated items for smallpox patients as well as attending to new arrivals. She is in charge of about 50 cases of smallpox in a situation widely acknowledged as overcrowded and inadequate.
By April 5 1902 the Ottawa Citizen states: “Smallpox under control” and reports that the staff on Porter’s Island is being reduced. However, Miss Ritchie, the head nurse, is to stay on with the 15 remaining cases. The Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health to the provincial government notes that only one death occurred on the Island that year and asserts that this speaks volumes about the care given to the patients.
When the new municipal Isolation Hospital situated on Range Road is completed in December 1902, scarlet fever and diphtheria are raging in the city. On opening day of the facility, Elizabeth Ritchie, as the Lady Superintendent, escorts Governor General Minto and Lady Minto around the premises.
Within a year, Ottawa’s medical community is pointing out that the City’s board of health had committed a colossal blunder in agreeing to this new hospital’s design. Its report emphasizes the inability of the staff to adhere to good isolation techniques given the layout and structural defects. At the time, it notes that Miss Ritchie and her staff are conscientious, extremely competent and as efficient as possible given the situation.
Nonetheless, at this point, Elizabeth Ritchie’s career takes a downward turn, not because of ill health caused by contagious diseases but because the city auditor does not approve of her management of expenditures. She has permitted the use of too much tea and cream from hospital supplies and has allowed the contractor responsible for delivering food to overcharge the city. Her written defence does not satisfy the aldermen, who decide to reorganize the entire institution. Having survived exposure to smallpox, diphtheria and scarlet fever, and possibly other infections, by 1904, she is dismissed from this employment, a victim to municipal politics.
In 1906, she re-emerges into public life, now married to Dr. Charles Thomas Ballantyne, a young physician with an established medical practice at 199 Rideau Street. Over the following years, as Mrs. C.T. Ballantyne, she raises a family, serves for many years as President of the Lady Stanley Institute Alumnae Association, volunteers with the Ladies Auxiliary of the County of Carleton Protestant General Hospital, and assists her husband at his medical events. The Elizabeth Ritchie who risked her own health to restore that of others faded into Ottawa’s history.