Susan B. Anthony’s brother Was shot, and The reformer becomes the nurse
In 1875, Susan B. Anthony was attending the May Suffrage Anniversary in New York City when she received word that her brother, Daniel R.—also known as D.R.—of Leavenworth, Kansas had been shot and was believed to be fatally wounded. Early the next morning she took a train to Rochester, where her sisters met her at the train station and told her that D.R. was still alive. She continued on the train to Kansas, finally reaching Leavenworth in the middle of the night of May 14.
D.R. had been shot because of something he had printed in his newspaper. The ball fractured the clavicle and severed the subclavian artery. In The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, her biographer, Ida Husted Harper, writes: “Then began the long struggle for life. For nine weeks Miss Anthony sat by his bedside giving the service of a born nurse, added to the gentleness of a loving sister. At the end of the first month, the physicians decided on a continued pressure upon the artery above the wound to prevent the constant rush of blood into the aneurism which had formed. Owing to its peculiar position this could be done only by pressing the finger upon it, and so the family and friends took turns day and night, sitting by the patient and pressing upon this vital spot. After five weeks, to the surprise of the whole medical fraternity, the experiment proved a success and recovery was no longer doubtful.
“The papers were filled with glowing accounts of Miss Anthony’s devotion, seeming to think it wonderful that a woman whose whole life had been spent in public work should possess in so large a degree not only sisterly affection but the accomplishments of a trained nurse.” (Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, Volume I, page 471). D.R. made a complete recovery and returned to his job as editor of the newspaper.
Susan B. Anthony tends her sister, Guelma
There’s a room in the Anthony House that we call Mary Anthony’s study. But for a time in the early 1870s, it was the sick room for Susan and Mary’s sister, Guelma Anthony McLean. Mary and Susan took care of Guelma during her long illness with consumption ( as tuberculosis was called at that time). Guelma was just 20 months older than Susan and they had always been close. Guelma and her family had lived with Mary and Susan and their mother in the house at #17 Madison Street, Rochester for 8 years; Guelma was one of the fifteen who voted in the election of 1872, even though she was ill and very frail. After the trial in Canandaigua in June of 1873, Susan spent much of her time caring for Guelma at the house on Madison Street, as Mary was busy all day with her job as school principal. In November of 1873, about a year after that election, Guelma died.