Elizabeth Milbank Anderson

Elizabeth Milbank Anderson (1850–1921), philanthropist and advocate for public health and women's education, was the daughter of Jeremiah Milbank (1818–1884), a successful commission merchant, manufacturer and investor, and Elizabeth Lake (1827–1891). Anderson established in 1905 one of the first foundations funded by a woman, the Memorial Fund Association (renamed the Milbank Memorial Fund in 1921), with gifts of $9.3 million by the time of her death. Anderson in her lifetime supported a wide range of health and social reform efforts during the Progressive Era, from tuberculosis and diphtheria eradication to relief work for European children following World War I, for which she was made in 1919 a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French government.

Anderson's recorded public health benefactions began with her initial gift in 1891 to Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau's sanatorium for the tubercular at Saranac Lake, New York, where from 1893 until her death she underwrote the operating costs of his laboratory for the investigation of the treatment of tuberculosis. Anderson's later gifts to improve public health included provision in New York City of a model public bath (1904); the establishment through the Children's Aid Society of the Chappaqua, New York Home for Convalescent Children (1909); the operating funds, with Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, for the Home Hospital for the Tubercular (1912); and in 1913 the establishment of the Department of Social Welfare at the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (a predecessor of today's Community Service Society of New York). The latter department funded public school lunches in New York City for 25,000 school children, provided funding for increased school-based medical inspections, and supported installation of school drinking water fountains and improved ventilation. It also provided public "comfort stations" (bathrooms), public laundries, and in a tenement section of the city, a Food Supply Store which sold good quality food at cost. The department also performed the groundwork which led to the establishment and funding of community health centers, including the Mulberry Street, Columbus Hill and Judson Health Centers, all in New York City (1918–1921). In 1916 Anderson gave $100,000 to Lillian Wald's Henry Street Settlement and joined its board of directors, and separately became the lead donor to the city's Department of Public Charities' Children's Home Bureau, which outplaced orphans from institutions to families. From 1914-1920, Anderson was the largest donor to Clifford Beers's National Committee for Mental Hygiene (today's Mental Health America) where she was particularly concerned for the treatment of returning World War I veterans with "shell-shock."

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