Denver, History of Colorado, BIOS: BATES, MARY ELIZABETH M.D. (published 1918)
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"History of Colorado", edited by Wilbur Fisk Stone, published by The S. J. 
Clarke Publishing Co. (1918) Vol. II


p. 452, 454-457
photo p. 453



MARY ELIZABETH BATES, M. D.

Aside from speaking of Dr. Mary Elizabeth Bates as a most 
successful and capable physician and surgeon, she may also be termed a 
practical reformer, or perhaps better still a constructionist, for her 
work in behalf of public welfare has been not so much in tearing down 
the old as in building up new along broader and better lines. She has 
constantly reached out in helpfulness to the individual and to the 
community at large and her efforts have been most effective, far-
reaching and beneficial.

Dr. Bates was born in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, February 25, 1861. 
Her father, William Wallace Bates, was there engaged in building the 
first clipper schooners that floated the Great Lakes but became even 
more widely known through the articles which he wrote on the merchant 
marine and the rules of ship construction. With the outbreak of the 
Civil war he went to the front as captain of the Ninteenth Wisconsin 
Volunteers, having raised a company to aid in the preservation of the 
Union. His wife, who bore the maiden name of Mary Cole, was a graduate 
of the New York City Hydropathic Medical School and prior to her 
marriage had earned her education by working in the woolen mills of 
Massachusetts. Following her marriage she practiced her profession 
gratuitously among the Wisconsin pioneers in addition to caring for the 
members of her own household. She radiated love to every living thing 
and the ill, the troubled and oppressed found help, strength and good 
cheer in her knowledge, patience and common sense. Heredity in Dr. 
Bates was expressed in her study of medicine, which she took up after 
graduating from the graded and high schools of Chicago, Illinois. She 
determined upon her professional career at a period when men in medical 
colleges waged active war on women in the profession, subjecting them 
to all sorts of opposition, ridicule and contumely, but Dr. Bates was 
early taught to ignore such tactics of an enemy and to go calmly on 
doing what she had started out to do- a course which one can afford to 
pursue if one is right. She was graduated with her class from the 
Woman's Medical College, which is the Woman's Medical School of the 
Northwestern University of Chicago, on the 28th of February, 1881, at 
the age of twenty years and three days, and to conform to the law her 
diploma was dated February 25, 1882. Her first achievement in 
connection with medical science was in passing the oral competitive 
examination for interneship in the Cook County Hospital of Chicago, 
March 31, 1881, and the following day she entered upon the duties of 
that position as the first woman interne in the history of the 
institution. For three months every fair and unfair means were tried, 
from hazing by the men internes, to foolish and unsustained charges 
preferred by an attending physician, together with political 
machinations, by the doctors and hospital management, to discourage her 
and force her resignation. But she was advised by the great anatomist 
and surgeon of Rush Medical College, Dr. Charles T. Parks, to "stick" 
if she wanted to and so she "stuck." Her regular term of interne 
service might be described first as six months of hard work and bitter 
opposition, then six months of harder -work and toleration and then 
another six months of the hardest work but with acknowledgment of 
success; and after three months she was graduated as house surgeon on 
the 1st of October, 1882. During the succeeding winter she taught minor 
surgery and demonstrated anatomy in her alma mater and spent the 
following year and a half in Germany and Vienna in special preparation 
for the practice of surgery and obstetrics, qualifying also for the 
professorship of anatomy. During the years in which she occupied the 
chair of anatomy in the Woman's Medical College she made a specialty of 
coaching women students in anatomy and surgery and qualifying them for 
examinations for interneship in Cook County Hospital. After Dr. Bates' 
service no women had applied for interneship. After all, others had 
backed out afraid. Dr. Bates practically compelled Dr. Rachael Hickey 
Carr to take the examination, saying that she owed it to herself, to 
Dr. Bates and to the cause and the college to keep the way open. Dr. 
Carr passed, standing one hundred per cent in anatomy, becoming the 
second woman interne in Cook County Hospital. The following year Dr. 
Mary Jeannette Kearsley took the examination with one hundred per cent 
in anatomy and thus became the third interne. She was followed by Dr. 
Bertha E. Bush and Dr. Alice Piper, whose high marks in anatomy won 
them the interneship, and they served with credit to themselves and 
their alma mater. They had had but two years' coaching before Dr. Bates 
was sent west for her health, but their marks in anatomy were higher 
than in any other branch and so raised their averages. Thus Dr. Bates 
opened the way for many other internes, which she feels has been no 
small compensation for her sacrifice of wealth, position and power, 
opportunity and health, her years of exile in strange places in pursuit 
of health, and thus she has come to a realization of the tact that when 
one makes the effort to do a thing it pays to choose something or 
somebody that will keep on doing things and thus continue the work.

One of Dr. Bates' most phenomenal professional successes and one 
which has given her the greatest happiness was the restoration of her 
father to comparative health in October, 1889. She went from an Oregon 
farm to Buffalo, New York, to find him in the last stages of gallstone 
disease, with complications, that without relief must have proven fatal 
in a few days. His physician had erroneously diagnosed his case as 
cancer of the stomach and had given him three weeks to live. Under the 
care of his daughter he went to Washington, D. C., and back, in three 
weeks, and three months later returned to Washington, being able to 
accept President Harrison's appointment as commissioner of navigation. 
He lived eighteen years to write and publish two great books-American 
Marine and American Navigation, together with numberless articles and 
addresses which he delivered before various conventions in all parts of 
the country from Atlanta, Georgia, to San Francisco, on the 
rehabilitation of the American merchant marine. He became the greatest 
living authority on the merchant marine and since his death in 1911 
there has been none to dispute the title.

After nine months spent on a cattle ranch in New Mexico, Dr. 
Bates located in Denver to resume the practice of medicine in October, 
1890, and became much interested in municipal, state and national 
affairs. Her mother had been a pioneer In the New England suffrage 
movement and Dr. Bates became identified with the Colorado Equal 
Suffrage Association, doing effective work in the legislative campaign 
for the amendment and the referendum campaign which gave the ballot to 
women in Colorado in 1893. She organized and was the first vice 
president of the first Woman's Political Club of Colorado. She 
organized the Colorado Woman's Political Club Quartette. The object of 
the club was the study of government and politics, of parliamentary law 
and of laws for bettering the protection of women and children, 
together with the means of improving woman's economic and political 
status in the community. This organization was to constitute an 
independent woman's party to hold the balance of power and to demand 
and enforce all of the social and political uplift that they might 
devise. But the next election was held in a presidential year and many 
of the women returned to the political faith in which they had been 
reared, acting with the republican, democratic, populist or other 
parties as the case might be. Dr. Bates also assisted in establishing 
The Woman Voter, a weekly paper, which was the organ of the club. She 
also wrote many campaign songs, which were sung by the quartette. With 
the disruption of the club she turned to constructive movements, being 
identified with the never-ending procession of constructive plans that 
has made Denver famous. Many of these movements have brought 
substantial results, though the organizations which accomplished this 
have passed out of existence. With Sarah May Townsend, D. D. S., she 
procured from the county commissioners the rights of women physicians 
to interneship in the then Arapahoe County Hospital, and by competitive 
examination a number of very able women physicians have since been 
passed and have graduated with honor from the hospital. She became 
identified with an organization known as the Union for Practical 
Progress, which was formed by three hundred enthusiastic men and women, 
but this ran adrift on the question of putting God in the constitution 
and by-laws. While the constitution was never completed, at the last 
meeting-one stormy, snowy night-seven were present and they resolved 
that the Union should accomplish at least one thing. At Dr. Bates' 
suggestion three were made a committee to call upon the populist board 
of public works and obtain the erection of a number of street drinking 
fountains. Two of the committee visited the board. The Woman's 
Christian Temperance Union had for years tried in vain to have some 
drinking fountains installed, but it was not until the matter was 
presented by Dr. Bates that the measure was passed by the efforts of 
President Arthur C. Harris of the board of public works, together with 
its other populist member, T. B. Buchanan, and the one republican 
member, Clarence Rhodes, resulting in transforming forty five hollow 
iron street corner directory posts into running fountains, about a 
third of which had a small basin below for dogs. The first was erected 
at the corner of Sixteenth and Stout streets, opposite the office 
window of Dr. Bates, whose moment of deepest humane joy was when she 
saw the fountain's first dog patron discover the water and drink his 
fill and then saw him race up Sixteenth street to tell another dog 
about it and saw that other dog turn and race back and quench his 
thirst on that hot day.

In 1902 Dr. Bates by personal canvass assisted in organizing the 
Law Enforcement League, whose members were pledged to vote for the 
gubernatorial candidate who should subscribe to the strict enforcement 
of the saloon, wineroom and gambling laws or stand impeachment 
proceedings if he failed to do so. The republican agreed. Then for 
political reasons and credit the democrats in power "put the lid on" 
and it stayed on for nine months under the elected republican governor, 
at the end of which time Denver was given home rule by legislative 
enactment and the governor no longer had the power to appoint the fire 
and police board, with power to enforce the laws of Denver. This led to 
a recognition that better laws were needed for the protection of 
children and young girls and Dr. Bates labored through three sessions 
of the Colorado legislature to secure the passage of the present "Age 
of Consent Law," and through two sessions to secure the passage of the 
law making the taking of improper, immoral or indecent liberties with 
either boy or girl under sixteen a felony punishable by from one to 
five years in the penitentiary. She was responsible for the present 
"White Slave Law" of Colorado, admitted to be the best in the United 
States, including both "procuring" and "living on the earnings of" and, 
not the least in her mind, the section in the game laws to compel the 
game wardens to feed the starving deer, antelope and elk in winter 
seasons when they cannot feed themselves. Dr. Bates was also 
instrumental in bringing about the passage of the "Law for the 
Examination and Care of Public School Children," passed in 1909, so 
that there is now a way to prevent the physical, mental and moral 
catastrophes to children and their entailed enormous loss to the 
community through consequent sickness, death or dependency. It would be 
impossible for any person to take so active a part in reform and 
corrective work as has Dr. Bates and not awaken the strong opposition 
of those who do not wish to hold themselves amenable to law. She was 
appointed by the county judge, whom she had never met, as chairman to 
the Denver board of county visitors and while acting in that capacity 
incurred the bitter personal enmity of the judge of the juvenile court 
for persisting against his opposition to carry out the desire of the 
board to comply with the provisions of the law as construed by the 
state's attorney general, which had reference to its duties in 
connection with that court. Because she could not see why the juvenile 
court judge should oppose such investigations as those to which other 
institutions had gracefully submitted and refused to have the board go 
officially to his court if all were properly conducted in the court and 
could bear investigation, the judge denounced her as a "tool of the 
beast" and the board its instrument, especially appointed to destroy 
his court. This disrupted the board and it never met again, although 
its members were conscientiously attempting to do their duty.

Sometimes as valuable service is rendered to the state by 
defeating proposed legislation of a vicious character as by procuring 
the enactment of a good law. In the nineteenth general assembly certain 
sinister and lawless interests secured the passage of a bill providing 
that any person charged with crime, provided it was not one of the four 
capital crimes, murder, rape (first degree only), arson and highway 
robbery, and providing the person charged had not been previously sent 
to the penitentiary, might be turned loose upon the community without 
trial by any judge or justice of the peace, or if tried, and convicted, 
might be released without punishment. It further provided that these 
orders might be made in secret and the judge or justice of the peace 
allowed to make any other order he wanted to-medical or surgical also, 
before any legal determination of the guilt or innocence of the accused 
and without right of appeal or protection for the accused and without 
right of the state to proceed further in that case. To conceal its 
dangerous character it was called an "Adult Probation Law," which 
deceptive and alluring title deluded many good men and women into 
supporting it appreciating what the effect of such a law would be-to do 
away at one stroke with most of the protection afforded by law to law 
abiding citizens against criminals, those for instance committing rape 
in second and third degrees, bigamy, burglary, forgery, kidnapping, 
assaults to kill, indecent liberties with children.

This "Adult Probation" bill has been described by judges of the 
highest legal tribunal in the state as "the most dangerous and vicious 
bill ever passed by a legislature." This bill was awaiting the 
signature of the governor when Dr. Bates' vigilance discovered its 
character and it was she who set in motion the influence of law and 
order which brought about its veto by Governor Ammons. Dr. Bates had 
organized and was the secretary of "The Woman's Protective League" 
devoted to the object, "To secure the Legal Protection of Girl 
Children," which naturally opposed any measure to destroy the 
protection to girl children afforded by the laws which she had caused 
to be enacted as well as any judge failing or refusing to enforce them. 
This same bill in substance was initiated at the next fall election 
following its veto by the same enemies of law enforcement and again it 
was Dr. Bates who caused its defeat at the polls. The same attempt to 
pass it in slightly modified form and the same defeat by Dr. Bates' 
efforts occurred in the twentieth and twenty-first general assemblies. 
On tour successive occasions, therefore, it was she who saved to the 
state, whatever protection the law affords against most of the 
criminals who infest it. Laws and the machinery of law enforcement are 
futile it there is to be no law enforcement.

Dr. Bates was also very active in bringing about investigations 
that ultimately, through the generalship of Dr. Ella H. Griffith led to 
a complete change in the management of the Old Ladies' Home and through 
all the years, while engaged in much reform and constructive work, she 
has continued actively in the practice of medicine with a liberal 
professional patronage. She has at times written papers for medical 
societies and for the medical press and she belongs to the Denver City 
and County Medical Association, the Colorado State Medical Association 
and the American Medical Association. She was the pioneer in 
introducing the movement which led to the West Denver Clean City Club, 
making talks in all of the schoolhouses and organizing the club, which 
cultivated the spirit of civic cleanliness as next to civic 
righteousness and made West Denver immaculate.

In the fall of 1913 Dr. Bates presented the educational value of 
the "Baby Health Contest" as organized and conducted by Mrs. Mary 
Terrill Watts of Iowa, to Fred P. Johnson, secretary of the National 
Western Stock Show. This resulted in the establishment of the eugenic 
section of the National Western Stock Show and the organization of the 
Colorado Baby Health Contest Association with Dr. Bates as chairman of 
the section and president of the association. The first Colorado baby 
health contest was held during the January stock show of 1914, with the 
"Iowa score card." Superintending baby health contests in Wichita, Salt 
Lake City, Fort Morgan, Colorado; Longmont and in Denver during the 
stock shows of 1915, 1916 and 1917 led Dr. Bates to arrange "the 
Colorado Baby Health Contest Score Card" which has been in much demand 
in different parts of the country for similar contests. This score card 
is admittedly the most complete and at the same time the most simple 
and quickest to use both by the examining physicians and by the 
superintendent in totaling the scores by points, the range of grading 
for each point and sub-point allows of finer and more just judgment and 
the totaling scheme is a time and trouble saver with accuracy assured.

Dr. Bates established and has practiced in Wichita, Salt Lake, 
Denver and other contests the only fair plan of arriving at a correct 
competitive scoring of babies for prizes. Owing to the inevitable 
variations in scoring of different judges and at different hours by the 
same judge as he grows more familiar with the work, the assigning of 
prizes by the score alone is very apt to do an injustice to a "better 
baby" and bestow an undeserved premium upon a poorer baby. Dr. Bates 
caused the five to ten or even twelve if scores were close, of the 
babies scoring, highest by the card in each class to be placed in a 
"premium class." At the Stock Show "Finals" were had at "Matinees" and 
in the little glass heated house constructed by Mr. Johnson's order, 
each class under the Stock Show classification, was called separately 
into competition and the chosen highest stripped and stood upon tables 
and judged somewhat after the manner of stock judging for premiums. 
Trained nurses are in attendance and several physicians familiar with 
score point standards vote for the first, second, third and fourth 
prizes which are then awarded. The Annual Eugenic Dinner, devoted to 
the promotion of plans and Ideals "For a Better Race" has been the 
feature of each baby health contest.

Dr. Bates is corresponding secretary of the Colorado Medical 
Women's War Service League, actively endeavoring to induce the surgeon 
general and the war department to recognize women physicians on an 
equality with men physicians in service of our country by giving them 
equal opportunity in base hospitals and otherwise, and equal rank and 
pay for the same or equivalent service; also to promote equality of 
preparation for highest physical efficiency and endurance of women 
physicians, nurses and other women in war work abroad and hospital work 
here, whether in Red Cross or in government employ-just as men are 
developed by appropriate training to achieve their physical and mental 
best. She is an active member of Denver Dumb Friends League and charter 
member and worker in its branch of the American Red Star Animal Relief.

Mary Elizabeth Bates has always been actuated by a spirit of 
defending the right and has with unfaltering effort adhered to the high 
purposes which have actuated her. Back of her work has been the spirit 
of the lines:

"Buckle right in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it,
And start in to sing as you tackle the thing
That cannot be done, and you'll do it."

Progress has been her watchword and achievement the result of her 
labors, and her Influence has been felt in a constantly broadening 
circle, so who can measure the effect of her labors?