Who is Betty Moulder? I have no idea. And, apparently, neither does anyone who has ever referenced Betty Moulder.
I tried to research Betty Moulder for this article, but I hit a stumbling block. I could not find any information about Betty Moulder. So instead I’ve decided to write about what I discovered to be the lack of information as it concerns Betty Moulder. Apparently, an author named Bethel McGrath who wrote a book in 1946, Nursing in Commerce and Industry, referenced someone named Betty Moulder, and ever since then, people in the occupational nursing industry have been attributing the title of America’s First Occupational Health Nurse to Moulder, without any study or examination. There is no evidence this person ever existed other than one reference in one book written in 1946.
Where does this all begin? Well, I discovered that in 1988 the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses published an article written by Jane E. Parker-Conrad, RN, PhD.
In this article, Dr. Parker-Conrad mentions someone named Betty Boulder:
“The beginning of occupational health nursing in the United States is often attributed to Betty Moulder, a young Philadelphia Blockley Hospital trained nurse, hired by a group of coal mining companies to care for the miners and their families (AAIN, 1976). She is thought to have been hired in 1888 though little is known about the nature of Miss Moulder’s duties, her background, or her nursing accomplishments”
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/216507998803600403
A reader of the article wrote a letter to the editor, in which she documented her quest to learn more about Betty Moulder:
“…Bureau of the Pennsylvania State Health Department in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They reported that for the period 1880 to 1890 most, and perhaps all, of the vital records had been burned; therefore, Ms. Moulder was not able to be located through vital records. I then called Philadelphia General Hospital, previously Blockley Hospital (which Ms. Moulder had attended); however, they did not have records dating back to that time. Additional archival information available at AAOHN in Atlanta was reviewed, but reference to Ms. Moulder could not be found.”
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/216507998803601207
Dr. Parker-Conrad responded:
“Dr. Parker-Conrad was invited to reply to Ms. May’s comments. As you will note in my article, “A Century of Practice” (AAOHN Journal, 1988), I said, “The beginning of occupational health nursing in the United States is often attributed to Betty Moulder” (from Pennsylvania), who was hired to provide care to coal miners and their families in 1888.
However, I went on to say, because so little is known about Ms. Moulder, Ada Mayo Stewart is often thought of as the first occupational health nurse. There are only two early original sources regarding occupational health nursing that I was able to find, and both are referenced at the end of my article (Wright, 1919; McGrath, 1946). One talks almost solely about Stewart and the other mentions Ms. Moulder, but does not have any details about her career. Even the AAIN (1976) booklet refers to this lack of detail about Betty Moulder. I searched for months to obtain information about the history of occupational health nursing when I first became the director of the graduate program in occupational health nursing at the University of Illinois in 1979, and again when researching this article. The original material and documentation is really very scarce.
It would be quite expensive and time consuming to research the history of occupational health nursing, but it really should be done if we can convince some foundation to provide funding. Thanks for your interest in our history. If the Pennsylvania Association of Occupational Health Nurses can shed some more light on Ms. Moulder, we all would be grateful!”
I could not find an online version of the McGrath text, but I did find the Wright text, Industrial Nursing; for Industrial, Public health, and Pupil Nurses, and for Employers of Labor:
https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/women-working-1800-1930/catalog/45-990019335230203941
I am not going to order the McGrath text for the purpose of this blog article. So I will base my conclusion on what Dr. Parker-Conrad wrote.
Given the lack of evidence pertaining to the existence of Betty Moulder, we cannot attribute the title of America’s First Occupational Health Nurse to Betty Moulder.
