Kate Pelham Newcomb
| Kate Pelham Newcomb | |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 26, 1885 Wellington, Kansas, U.S. |
| Died | May 30, 1956 (aged 70) Woodruff, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Education | University of Buffalo |
| Occupation | physician |
Kate Pelham Newcomb (July 26, 1885 – May 30, 1956), or "Dr. Kate" as she was known to her community, was a physician in northern Wisconsin. She practiced medicine in and around Boulder Junction and Woodruff, Wisconsin, in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. In 1954 she gained national recognition from television producer Ralph Edwards and the NBC program This Is Your Life for inspiring the "Million Penny Parade", to raise funds for a new hospital.
Born in July 1886 to New York City attorney Thomas Walter Pelham (corporate counsel and later president of the Gillette Razor Company) and his wife Catherine Callahan Pelham, Kate Pelham spent the first years of her life in Wellington, Leoti, and Abilene, Kansas. After the death of her mother the family moved to Buffalo, New York. Pelham attended Public School 19, graduating in June 1900. When her father initially refused to allow her to attend medical school, she became a teacher, serving grade schoolers in Buffalo's Public School 54, but in time he relented and allowed her to enroll in the University of Buffalo. Trained by Dr. Louise Hurrell and others, she entered medical school in September 1913. Pelham earned her M.D. in 1917, specializing in obstetrics. She completed an externship at the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children (later the Lower Manhattan Hospital) on New York's lower east side, where she attended the home deliveries (Pelham would deliver some 800 children here) of the Italian and Armenian women who had come to the infirmary for prenatal care.
In December 1917 Pelham moved to an internship and residency at the Woman's Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. Working alongside physicians Dr. Anna O'Dell, Dr. Grace Clark and Dr. Mary Haskins, Newcomb worked in a section of the hospital donated by Henry Ford that was dedicated to unwed mothers; in time the four women would open a private practice in pediatrics.
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