Mary Davis Ridgway 1873-1927
March 01, 2008
Mary Davis
**Ridgway**
1873-1927 graduated from Cleveland Homeopathic Medical
College in 1898,
and she was on the House Staff at the Women’s Homeopathic
Hospital in
Philadelphia.
Ridgway was a homeopathic physician and women’s rights advocate who in 1912 founded Philadelphia’s Providence General Hospital to serve the medical needs of the rapidly expanding Germantown/Roxborough section of the city.
A leader in the women’s rights movement and a homeopathic physician and surgeon. She was founder of Providence General Hospital (chartered 1913), the principal officers of which were women.
From 1914 to 1917 it served the community from nearby Abraham Rittenhouse Home. Political pressure then forced the hospital to move from this site, and it closed shortly after Dr. Ridgway’s death.
Ridgway wrote for the_ Transactions of the … Session of the American Institute of Homeopathy_ in 1903, The Hahnemannian Monthly in 1911 on repairing the cervix at the time of repair of perineum after confinement.
Her biography was written by Allen Lesley.
“Prue” Ridgway was a nurse in Germantown, Pennsylvania working for Dr. Mary Ridgway when she met the doctor’s brother, Walter. They married and moved to Caroline and became the parents of “our” Dr. Mary Ridgway Tinker.
After having her own practice for a few years, she married Dr. Martin B. Tinker, JR., a surgeon but she was still known as “Dr. Mary” or “Dr. Ridgway.” continue reading:
Martin B. Tinker who was also a doctor, as was their son, also named Martin.