The pioneering physician who refused to admit defeat
On May 7, 1905, the Mead Mercantile, near Spokane, burned to the ground. A stable boy, Melville Logan, noticed the fire while putting away horses nearby. He recalled seeing a woman standing across from the blazing structure, fully dressed, watching silently, and taking no action. Later, he told police her facial expression appeared most consistent with grim satisfaction.
Later, Mary Latham, the woman who allegedly watched the building burn, was arrested, tried and convicted for arson. But before the sentence could be carried out, she eluded the Spokane County Sheriff and escaped to the backwoods of Idaho. Despite the warrant stipulating “wanted dead or alive,” countless friends came to her assistance. Mary Latham was a doctor, believed to be the first woman physician to practice medicine in all the Washington Territory. And in honor of National Women Physicians Day, celebrated annually on February 3, I want to share her unique and tragic story.
I stumbled upon her story while shopping on San Juan Island, at a bookstore named Serendipity Books. The book “More than Petticoats: Remarkable Washington Women,” caught my eye and told the story of a woman, who was born in Ohio on November 5, 1844, back when the expectations of women were simply to “keep house.”
But Mary didn’t want to keep house. After attending Clermont Academy, she married a physician named Edward Latham. Together, they had three boys, Frank, James and Warren. At 36, after raising her sons, Mary embarked upon her “dream of having a profession — medicine.” She graduated from the Cincinnati College of Medicine and Surgery at the age of 42, among the first class of women allowed onto the wards at Cincinnati General Hospital.
Debilitated by asthma, Mary set out west with her sons, in search of a “more salubrious climate,” landing in Spokane Falls. Despite woman doctors being rare at the time, Mary established a medical office in Spokane and was beloved by colleagues and her community. She assisted countless women through pregnancy and challenging deliveries. Between 1894 and 1905, Mary delivered 166 infants, including four sets of twins; “only” four infants were stillborn, leading one newspaper to write that Latham, “has no superior in the state.”
Like other women physicians I have written about, Latham was a prolific writer of essays, short stories and articles, and a community advocate, mostly for the benefit of women and children. Dr. Latham was a founder of the Spokane Public Library, a suffragist and supported a woman’s right to choose.
Unfortunately, her life was shattered when her 33-year-old son James — a brakeman on the Northern Pacific Railroad — was hit by a train on April 30, 1903, while walking across the Spokane freight yards in the dark. Following the accident, Mary suffered a stroke. As a result, she had altered mental capability and walked with a limp for the rest of her life. Mary may have suffered from dementia, which might explain how she ended up a fugitive.
The hardest struggle of Mary’s life involved a legal dispute over a 500-acre parcel of land owned by her son with a general store. The Mead Mercantile Company was part drugstore, grocery store and supply store. After Mary moved her residence and medical office out to Mead, a woman named Jennie Johnson filed a lawsuit claiming she was engaged to James before his death and that he willed her the Mead property. Johnson accused Mary of hiding her son’s last will and testament to retain ownership of the land. Mary swore she had no knowledge of any engagement or legal document bequeathing the property to Johnson.
In the end, the court awarded the Mead property, including the mercantile, to Jennie Johnson. And just a few days before Johnson took possession of the store, it suddenly burned to the ground. Based on the eyewitness account of the stable boy and hearsay from an elderly patient of Mary’s, Latham was convicted of arson by an all-male jury. We will never know for sure whether the fire was mere coincidence or a criminal act. Judge Miles Poindexter sentenced Latham to four years of hard labor at the Walla Walla State Penitentiary. Before beginning her sentence, Mary escaped to Idaho in her buggy and a manhunt was launched to capture the lady doctor. After stopping at a farmhouse for a meal, the family contacted the sheriff, and Mary was apprehended. She served 15 months in prison before being paroled due to failing health.
Whether an arsonist or philanthropist, the fact remains that Mary Latham refused to accept defeat. As a young woman, she refused to be content with “keeping a home;” as a mother, she refused to give up her lifelong dream to study medicine; as a doctor, she refused to accept that the poor deserved less in life; and as a fugitive, she refused to serve time without going on the run. True to form, after her parole, Dr. Latham refused to stop practicing medicine, working tirelessly caring for the poorest citizens of Spokane, especially its women and children. In 1917, at the age of 72, Latham contracted pneumonia while caring for a 12-day old infant and died, merely two years before Congress granted women the right to vote.
Today, in Spokane, sitting next to the Spokesman Review newspaper production facility, there are 12 bronze busts honoring “builders and leaders.” Among them, you will find the bust of Dr. Mary Latham, whose inscription reads: “Physician. Essayist. Library Advocate.” While we may never know whether the first female physician in the Washington Territory was more caring humanitarian or callous pyromaniac; to me, the answer doesn’t really matter. Dr. Latham broke barriers for countless women physicians who would follow in her footsteps, including me. And for that, I am grateful to her.
If you wish to learn more about Dr. Latham’s story, please read “More than Petticoats: Remarkable Washington Women” by L.E. Bragg and “Mercy and Madness: Dr. Mary Archard Latham’s Tragic Fall from Female Physician to Felon” by Beverly Lionberger Hodgins.
This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Mary Latham was a pioneer for Washington women in medicine
