Julia Clifford Lathrop
Julia Clifford Lathrop was a prominent social worker, public administrator, and advocate for women's rights, born into an affluent family in Rockland, Illinois. Her father, William Lathrop, was a notable abolitionist and Republican organizer, while her mother, Sarah Adeline Lathrop, was a suffragist and community leader. After attending Rockford Seminary, Lathrop graduated from Vassar College in 1880 and began her career by working closely with her father and engaging in social reform efforts. She became a resident of Hull House, a Chicago settlement founded by Jane Addams, where she dedicated herself to improving the lives of marginalized communities, particularly children and the mentally ill.
Lathrop was the first woman appointed to the Illinois Board of Charities and conducted extensive research on institutional care in the state, advocating for reforms in child welfare and the treatment of the mentally ill. In 1912, she was appointed by President Taft to lead the newly established Children's Bureau, where she focused on issues such as infant mortality, juvenile delinquency, and child labor laws. Her influential work gained international recognition, leading to awards from Poland and Czechoslovakia. Despite health challenges that led to her resignation in 1921, Lathrop remained active in advocacy, helping to establish important legislation for maternal and infant health. She passed away in 1932, remembered as a pioneering figure in the field of child welfare and social reform.
Subject Terms
Julia Clifford Lathrop
- Julia Clifford Lathrop
- Born: June 29, 1858
- Died: April 15, 1932
Social worker, public administrator, and women’s rights activist, was born into an affluent Rockland, Illinois, family. Her lawyer father, William Lathrop, was a committed abolitionist and Republican party organizer who served in the state legislature and later the U.S. Congress. A supporter of women’s rights, he drafted the bill that allowed women to enter the Illinois bar, and the first woman lawyer in the state read law in his office. Her mother, Sarah Adeline (Potter) Lathrop, was valedictorian of the first graduating class of Rockford Seminary, a community cultural leader, and a lifelong suffragist.
Julia Lathrop was the oldest of two daughters and three sons. She too attended Rockford Seminary, but after one year chose to transfer to Vassar, a women’s college. Returning to Rockford after her graduation in 1880, she spent the next decade working as her father’s secretary, reading some law in his office, and sharing his involvement in women’s rights and civil service reform, as well as the treatment of the mentally ill.
In My Friend, Julia Lathrop (1935), social activist Jane Addams points to “an almost striking similarity in the early experiences of Julia Lathrop and myself “—almost exact contemporaries, they grew up in Republican homes in neighboring Illinois counties. In 1889, Lathrop became involved with Hull House, the Chicago settlement newly founded by Addams and Ellen Gates Star, and she went to live there the following year. As a full-time resident over the next twenty years, she became an ardent crusader for the rights of the poor, especially the young, the ill, and the mentally disturbed.
During the depression of 1893 she volunteered to investigate relief applications; her grim account of “The Cook County Charities” was included in Hull-House Maps and Papers (1895). In July 1893 she began serving as the first woman on the Illinois Board of Charities and undertook a study of institutional care throughout the state. Interviewing staff and residents at more than a hundred county farms and almshouses, she publicized her observations in annual reports, articles, speeches, and a handbook of Suggestions for Visitors to County Poorhouses and to Other Public Charitable Institutions (1905) in order to campaign for separate facilities for young and old populations as well as for the physically and mentally ill. In 1898 she traveled to Europe to observe outpatient treatment of the mentally ill; on a 1900 visit she studied facilities available for epileptics.
Julia Lathrop also worked with Hull House resident Florence Kelley in the National Consumers League, founded in 1899 to fight industrial abuses. In the same year, Lathrop, Addams, and Lucy L. Flower, with the assistance of the Chicago Women’s Club and the Chicago Bar Association, obtained legislation for the first juvenile court in the United States. A special juvenile court building, including a detention center, was constructed across from Hull House; ten years later the Juvenile Psychopathic Institute, the first mental hygiene clinic for children, was added. Lathrop reported on this project in her chapter on “The Background of the Juvenile Court in Illinois” in The Child, the Clinic, and the Court (1925).
Out of concern for the poorly trained employees she found in state institutions, Lathrop resigned from the Illinois Board of Charities in 1901 to protest corrupt hiring practices, or what she labeled “too much politics.” Accepting reappointment in 1905, she continued to press for civil service reforms until the board itself was reorganized along nonpartisan lines in 1909. To improve training programs, she joined with Graham Taylor in 1903-1904 to organize social work courses at the Institute of Social Science (after 1907 called the Chicago School of Civic and Philanthropy). Working without salary, she lectured at the school and set up a research department with a grant she and Sophonisba Breckenridge obtained from the Russell Sage Foundation. Among her innovations was the first occupational therapy program for mental patients. In 1909 she became a charter member of Clifford W. Beers’s National Committee for Mental Hygiene.
During 1910-1911, Lathrop made a world tour with her sister. (Even then she prepared a report on public education in the Philippines.) Upon her return, she was appointed by President Taft to head the newly created Children’s Bureau of the Labor Department. Lathrop launched the bureau’s activities with an infant mortality survey and follow-up report advocating uniform birth registration (Birth Registration, An Aid in Protecting the Lives and Rights of Children). Later bureau projects dealt with maternal mortality, nutrition, juvenile delinquency and juvenile courts, the rights of illegitimate children, retarded children, and legislation in child labor and maternal pensions When the bureau was delegated to enforce the first child labor law (passed in 1916 but declared unconstitutional in 1918), a Child Labor Division was set up under the direction of Lathrop’s Hull-House colleague Grace Abbott. With U.S. entry into World War I, the two women initiated a study of child welfare in war zones and sought federal aid for dependents of enlisted men. (Lathrop also testified before the House Military Committee to advocate military rank for army nurses.) They organized a Children’s Year for 1919 to raise public awareness of the effects of war on children and held a national conference on child welfare standards.
Lathrop was by this time an internationally known and respected authority on child welfare; she received awards from Poland and Czechoslovakia for her work, and in 1918-1919 served as president of the National Conference of Social Work. But in 1921—just before her campaign to secure federal aid for mothers and children saw the passage of the Sheppard-Towner Act for infant and maternal health-care programs—she was forced to resign from the Children’s Bureau because of a thyroid condition. Returning to Rockland to live with her sister, she nonetheless continued to support the work of the bureau and served from 1925 to 1931 as an assessor on the Child Welfare Committee of the League of Nations. She remained on the board of the Immigrants’ Protective League of Illinois, which she had helped to found in 1908, and served on a committee investigating overcrowding at the Ellis Island immigration center. Above all, she worked with the newly created league of Women Voters, which she regarded as “a laboratory method in political education.” A member of the national board, she served as president of the Illinois League from 1922 to 1924 and later as vice-president and counselor in public welfare, traveling throughout the state to address newly enfranchised women.
During her last months, Julia Lathrop joined what was ultimately a successful clemency appeal for a Rockford teenager facing execution for murder. She entered the hospital for removal of a goiter in April 1932 and died three days after surgery. In a letter to her sister, President Hoover eulogized her as “a pioneer in the scientific problems of childhood,” while her friend and co-worker Jane Addams hailed her as “one of the most useful women in the country.”
Julia Lathrop’s personal papers are in the Rockford College Library; some letters are among the Grace and Edith Abbott Papers at the University of Chicago. In addition to the publications mentioned above, she contributed many articles to Charities, the Survey, and other periodicals. Her speeches appear in the Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction (1894, 1905) and the Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work (1919, 1923, 1926, 1928, 1930).
Jane Addams’ memoir covers Lathrop’s life before and after her tenure at the Children’s Bureau; the account of her decade in Washington was to have been written by Grace Abbott but was never completed. Grace’s sister, Edith Abbott, has contributed the article on Lathrop in the Dictionary of American Biography, supplement 1 (1944). C. A. Chambers, Seedtime of Reform: American Social Service and Social Action 1918-1933 (1963), surveys the larger historical context, while J. Conway, “Women Reformers and American Culture, 1870-1930,” Journal of Social History 5 (Winter 1971-1972). offers an interesting feminist perspective on the period. See also the article by L. C. Wade in Notable American Women (1971).An obituary was published in the New York Times on April 16, 1932, with an editorial appreciation the following day.