Helen Morton (physician)

Morton was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the daughter of Edwin Morton and Betsy Torrey Harlow Morton. Both of her parents were also born in Plymouth. She was descended from Puritan leader George Morton, and through that connection was related to many prominent New Englanders. She attended Antioch College and the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, then completed her medical degree at the New England Female Medical College in 1862. She had further training in obstetrics in Paris.[1][2]

Morton spent two years as director of an obstetric hospital in Paris in the 1860s. She was awarded a medal by the French government in 1864.[1] She returned to Boston and was an attending physician at the New England Hospital for Women and Children,[3][4] in charge of maternity services, for at least twenty years.[5] She was close colleagues with Maria Zakrzewska, Ednah D. Cheney, Susan Dimock, and Lucy E. Sewall, among other women physicians working in Boston in her time.[6][7][8]

Morton was a member of the American Forestry Association,[9] and a supporter of the Boston Music School Settlement.[10] She donated several subscriptions of periodicals, including American Journal of Archaeology and Forestry and Irrigation, to the Plymouth Public Library.[11] She was also active in the Boston Young Women's Christian Association,[12] and a subscribing member of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union.[13]

In the 1890s, Morton lived with another obstetrician, Mary Forrester Hobart, in Boston.[14][15] Hobart was the great-great-granddaughter of Maine midwife and diarist Martha Ballard.[16] Morton had severe arthritis that kept her from working in her later years.[1][5] In 1906, the Helen Morton Wing of Sewall Maternity Hospital was named in her honor.[5][6] She died in 1915, at the age of 81, in Boston. In her memory, her family donated an ambulance to the American Women's Hospitals Service in France during World War I.[1]