Kathrine Burrage: First woman Textile School and pioneering occupational therapist

By Bernie Zelitch

Katharine Barrage was the first woman graduate of the first class of Lowell Textile School which later became UMass Lowell. New evidence suggests she was also a pioneering occupational therapist.

On the evening of June 3, 1899, Lowell Textile School (LTS)­—the first textile school in New England­—held the graduation of its debut class. Of the 25 students honored in the crowded lecture hall on Middle Street, Katharine Burrage stood out for being the only woman. She was the only graduate of the art and design department, and at 33, likely the oldest by over a decade.

Katharine’s short life (1865-1914) and a career outside her hometown help explain why you haven’t heard of her. But she enjoyed accolades, notably after 1908 when Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) recruited her for an innovative social service program. Three of her coworkers later described her clay modeling class for neurological patients in the context of “occupational therapy” (OT); this predates by several years others generally credited with formalizing that profession.

Her trailblazing status at the predecessor of UMass Lowell (UML) was recognized that night in a speech to the graduates, families, and friends. LTS President Alexander G. Cumnock seemed to have pointed to her when he commented:

I am glad to say tonight that one of the graduates of the school of design is a woman, one of our Lowell girls. This school is open to all women of Lowell, and you will have the same opportunities that the boys have. There [are]variety of trades a woman can enter, besides typewriting, if they will come to this school. (1899 Lowell Textile Journal)

President Cumnock did not mention her name, but the Katharine’s diploma was listed in the 1899 Textile School Annual Catalogue (the day before the graduation), other contemporary reports, as well as in yearbook alumni listings until her death. The following year she earned an advanced art and design degree from LTS.

Katharine was born on July 22, 1865, in Lowell, the oldest of seven children of Hamilton and Mary H. Davis Burrage. Hamilton was paymaster at Lowell Bleachery near the family home at 856 Gorham St. and son of a Boston carriage maker. His ancestor, Charles Burrage, migrated from England to Massachusetts in 1637. Mary’s father, Sidney Davis, who died three months before the LTS graduation, was prominent in Lowell real estate and her great-great-grandfather, Henry Fletcher of Chelmsford, died in the Revolutionary War. The family was well off enough to summer with society families like the Whipples and Butlers on the Maine seacoast. In newspapers, their names were sprinkled throughout social, religious, political, charity, socially progressive, and civic news items. They were associated with debutante balls, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Republican Party, the Humane Society, soldiers’ charities, and especially the First Unitarian Church. The Burrage children were independent and accomplished. As a single woman of 30, Katharine journeyed by train to visit brother Guy Burrage in San Francisco; he was stationed there following graduation from the Naval Academy and was on track to becoming a vice admiral.

When she was 14 the artistic Katharine may have taken instruction from Pierre Millet, a famous who immigrated from France. The board of education engaged him to teach a new free clay modeling class in its building on Dutton and Broadway Streets. (The Boston Museum of Fine Arts owns four of Millet’s works. He was the brother of French painter Jean-François Millet who is not to be confused with English painter John Everett Millais). It seems more than coincidental that she taught this same skill at the same site following her 1883 graduation from Lowell High School.  And that it was a skill which ultimately defined her Boston career.

Her early teaching experience would have made her an excellent candidate to become LTS’s first woman graduate. And they were looking for somebody like her. The state-chartered school took seriously a mandate to admit women coming from Worcester State Sen. Albert A. Roe, a retired high school principal. (Lowell Sun, Feb. 8, 1898). We can easily imagine that Katharine was in attendance that evening, eager to apply. It’s also plausible that her father advanced her candidacy to President Cumnock who he knew at least 15 years from when they were secretary and treasurer, respectively, of the Mechanics’ Association (Lowell Sun, April 7, 1883).

Katharine would have passed rigorous, hands-on courses in engineering, chemistry, and mathematics: the school was modeled after Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose president also served on the LTS board and where the first principal, William W. Crosby, was a graduate and teacher of mechanical engineering. Covering regular LTS student exhibits, reporters praised her art and fabric work as among the best. She studied an additional year, receiving a post graduate certificate in 1900 in decorative art and designing. Surely, she was among the most qualified textile industry designers.

And of all people, LTS President Cumnock could have offered Katharine employment as he was upper management at Boott and Appleton Mills. His speech promising women “a variety of trades… if they will come this school” clearly did not apply to Katharine who continued in her old job teaching art in evening classes. In that light, Cumnock was probably not an early feminist but was pointing to Katharine merely as proof of his promise to admit women. Still, six years later, Katharine’s 1905 certificate may have helped her beat Boston candidates for an art teaching job at a settlement house for immigrants in the North End.

Katharine was publicly praised (Nov. 18, 1899, Daily Courier) for her part in the church’s ambitious history: “The Lowell Book: The cover was designed by Miss Burrage, a recent graduate of the Lowell Textile school, and cleverly introduces, if you have noticed, Lowell’s motto, ‘Art is the handmaid of human good.’” Above, the words have been rearranged to make them more readable. This style would have been part of the arts and crafts movement taught to fabric design students at LTS.

A commuter’s double life

In Lowell, where she lived with her parents, she was called “Katie”— on her record of birth, on her death certificate, and in newspaper reports of her charity work or acting in a play. At LTS and later professionally, she seemed to have taken on a more formal identity. Each weekday she walked a few minutes to the Bleachery Boston & Maine station and an hour later became “Katharine” to her Boston coworkers first at North Bennet Street Industrial School (NBIS), then at MGH, Boston Public Schools, and possibly McLean Hospital. After a full day’s work, she returned home with enough stamina to teach her classes as “Katie” in the Lowell evening school.

Her reputation as an exceptional art teacher at NBIS likely attracted the attention of Dr. James Jackson Putnam, world-renowned neurologist at MGH.  In 1908, he recruited her to lead a hands-on workshop for neurological patients which later expanded to orthopedic and dermatological patients (at that time, often a euphemism for syphilitic patients). Under her leadership, the workshop continued for seven years and in an unusual practice, featured patients teaching other patients. Subsequent recollections by Putnam, Frederick A. Washburn (MGH Director 1908–34), and Ida M. Cannon (MGH head of social work) admired her teaching and person. They noted the positive clinical outcomes and placed her clay modeling classes squarely in the context of an “occupational therapy” program.

This circa 1940 unpublished manuscript by Ida M. Cannon, who worked with Katharine, suggests the Lowell resident was brought in to conduct “occupational therapy” in a timeline ahead of others. (Psychiatric Influences in Social Work, Harvard Medical School Library, viewed Sept. 12, 2024)

Although the benefits of rehabilitation through physical activities had been known for centuries, there is historical significance to this specific term as a specialized discipline. The American Occupational Therapy Association, Inc., the largest practitioner organization, publishes a list of “100 Influential People” in OT history. Katharine is not on the list. For perspective, the list contains Eleanor Clarke Slagle (1870–1942), sometimes called the “mother of occupational therapy.” Slagle is said to have formalized the profession in Chicago around 1911, four years after Katharine’s MGH project. (Interestingly, the common thread between the two women was work in settlement houses for immigrants inspired by Jane Adams’ pioneering social work in Chicago.)

In fact, the term seems to have been in use In Katharine’s program at MGH before 1911 as a report from the Social Services department that year said:

The Modelling Class under Miss Burrage, to which repeated reference has been made in earlier reports, continues to be a source of great pleasure and profit to the patients. Their interest in it is unabated, and some of them have gained so much in skill that various of the articles made by them may prove to have a market value….Patients in the Orthopaedic Ward had frequently to spend a long time in the Hospital, and, because of the chronic nature of their diseases, were often invalided at home for prolonged periods. Occupational Therapy found in them sympathetic and grateful recipients of its efforts.

Proof of her professional impact came almost two years after her death. Putnam, founder of American Neurological Association and American Psychoanalytical Association, wrote a 1900-word Memorial of Miss Katharine Burrage for the premier medical publication of its time, Boston Medical and Surgical Journal which became New England Journal of Medicine. Here is an excerpt:

She was not only a teacher of clay-modeling, but was ever a friend in the best sense to all those with whom she came in contact, the more so if she felt that they had traits and talents which it lay within her power to stimulate. Under her instruction of the class at the Massachusetts General Hospital, technical success was systematically subordinated to the development of individual power, taste, and character. She could never have worked whole heartedly on any other plan, and if she had tried to do so it would have been at the sacrifice of an essential element in her principles and in her influence upon others.

If Katharine made a profound impression on her colleagues, why are her achievements lost to history? One simple answer from Putnam’s tribute is that Katharine did not seek publicity. In contrast, LTS chemistry professor Louis A. Olney, characterized in Mary H. Blewett’s 1995 history of UML as “powerful” and “imperious,” has a building named after him as does the high-profile Cumnock. (Probably without benefit of today’s full set of source materials, Blewett found Catherine Feindel to be the “first coed” in 1913.) Katharine’s forgotten role as a pioneer in OT offers one possibility: maybe if she had lived at least another five years, her voice would have been heard among others across the country who were working to formalize and promote the OT profession. And it almost goes without saying that it was uncommon in the early 1900s to honor the achievements of women.

She died on May 16, 1914, of a long-term kidney condition. Her one-paragraph obituary was strictly about funeral arrangements.  She was buried as “Katie Burrage” at her family plot in Lowell Cemetery.

Her photo

In September 2022, I bought the above portrait of an unidentified young woman in a black graduation robe from a Vermont antiques dealer for $14.10.  My organization, by Annie Powell, has an active acquisition program and I purchased this image because of the Powell studio logotype.

I began to give serious attention to the photograph months later when coincidentally I discovered Annie and husband John were near-exclusive photographers for LTS. One connection is that Annie and husband John were close friends with Fenwick Umpleby, who like them immigrated from West Yorkshire, England. Katharine’s story emerged after work with archives at Russell Museum of Mass General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, McLean Hospital, and UML Center for Lowell History.

I can identify the photo’s identity with high certainty because:

1. The Powell studio address on the backside is 76 Agawam Street, dating the photo close to the time of a move nearby to 55 S. Whipple Street.
2. Most students at LTS were around 20 years old. The age of the subject seems to correspond with Katharine’s age at the time of 33.
3. I had to explore the possibility that the subject was a graduate of the all-women Normal School which also had its first graduation in 1899. But Normal School graduation robes were white (Lowell Sun, June 21, 1899).

Pamela Weeks, Binney Family curator at New England Quilt Museum, holds a poster honoring Katharine Burrage. As part of the by Annie Powell 100 Posters Project, the museum on Middle Street (which is a block away from where Katharine studied at LTS in 1899) displays the poster.