Mary Antoinette Cannon

Mary Antoinette Cannon (1884 – March 17, 1962) was an American medical social worker and social work educator. She was a professor in the New York School of Social Work at Columbia University, and president (1922-1923) of the American Association of Hospital Social Workers.

Mary Antoinette Cannon
Mary Antoinette Cannon, from a 1922 publication.
Mary Antoinette Cannon, from a 1922 publication.
Born1884
Deposit, New York
DiedMarch 17, 1962
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)social worker, college professor
Years active1910-1946
Known formedical social work

Early life

Cannon was born in Deposit, New York, the daughter of Robert Miller Cannon and Antoinette Downs Wheeler Cannon. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1907. She earned a master's degree at Columbia University in 1916.[1]

Career

After college, Cannon worked at Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the early practitioners of medical social work in a hospital setting. She worked at the Boston Consumptives Hospital from 1909 to 1910. From 1916 to 1921 she was Director of Social Work at University Hospital of Philadelphia. From 1921 to 1946 she was a professor in the Columbia University School of Social Work.[2][3] In the 1941–1942 academic year, she took a leave from Columbia to be director of the Department of Social Work at the University of Puerto Rico.[4]

Cannon was one of the founders of the American Association of Hospital Social Workers,[5] and president of the organization in 1922–1923.[6][7] She was co-editor of the textbook Social Case Work: An Outline for Teaching, which went through nine editions between 1933 and 1938,[8] and author of two other monographs: Health Problems of the Foreign Born (1920), and Outline for a Course in Planned Parenthood (1944).

In 1949, Cannon was investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, for her involvement in the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace.[9]

Later life and legacy

After her retirement from Columbia in 1945, she was a consultant to Puerto Rico's Department of Labor, and taught at a social workers' workshop in Puerto Rico in 1953. She was director of the James Weldon Johnson Community Center in Harlem. In 1950, Columbia University established the Mary Antoinette Cannon Fellowship, for social work students of Puerto Rican birth or parentage.[10]

Personal life

Mary Antoinette Cannon shared a house in Greenwich Village from 1923 to 1962 with her partner Janet Thornton, a fellow Bryn Mawr alumna and a social worker based at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City.[9] Cannon died in 1962, aged 78 years, in New York.[11]

Ida Maud Cannon

A fellow founder of the American Association of Hospital Social Workers, Ida Maud Cannon (1877-1960), was not a relative of Mary Antoinette Cannon,[9] though they were colleagues and worked together on committees.[12]

References
  1. Columbia University, Catalogue (1940-1941): 29.
  2. Mary Antoinette Cannon, "Underlying Principles and Common Practices in Social Work" Families in Society (July 1928): 163.
  3. Martha Morrison Dore, "Clinical Practice", in Ronald A. Feldman, Sheila B. Kamerman, eds., The Columbia University School of Social Work: A Centennial Celebration (Columbia University Press 2001): 128. ISBN 9780231122825
  4. Elizabeth G. Meier, A history of the New York School of Social Work (Columbia University Press 1954): 109.
  5. "American Association of Hospital Social Workers" Transactions of the American Hospital Association (1920): 316.
  6. "Annual Meeting of the American Association of Hospital Social Workers" Hospital Social Service (1922): 111.
  7. "Hospital Social Workers will Assemble Semi-Annual Meeting" Modern Hospital (September 1922): 15.
  8. Mary Antoinette Cannon and Philip Klein, eds., Social Case Work: An Outline for Teaching (Columbia University Press 1933).
  9. Sedgwick, Thomas W. (May 2012). "Early Hospital Social Work Practice: The Life and Times of Janet Thornton". Affilia. 27 (2): 212–221. doi:10.1177/0886109912444103. ISSN 0886-1099. S2CID 143660974.
  10. "New Fellowship Set Up" New York Times (November 13, 1950): 24. via ProQuest
  11. "Mary Cannon, 78, a Social Worker" New York Times (March 18, 1962): 86. via ProQuest
  12. Harriett M. Bartlett, "Ida M. Cannon: Pioneer in Medical Social Work" Social Service Review 49(2)(June 1975): 208.


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