James A. Hughes Recalls Early Vassar Hospital

by Helen Myers (Poughkeepsie New Yorker, April 1, 1945)

Several years ago, the late Dr. William A. Krieger had a bronze tablet put in one of the student nurses' classrooms at Vassar Hospital. It reads: "To James, in appreciation of faithful service since 1895." The tablet honors James A. Hughes who began work at the hospital exactly 50 years ago today, and is still on the job.

"James" or "Jimmy" to everyone at Vassar, from student nurses to staff doctors, Mr. Hughes has worked under all the hospital's superintendents: Dr. Guy C. Bayley, Dr. Henry G. Bugbee, Dr. James T. Harrington, Benjamin Fowler, Alexander Candlish, Sidney Barnes, and Joseph Weber.

When he began his long service eight or ten patients was the average in summer, 18 or 20 in winter and he has seen the time when Vassar had only one patient for a full week. People didn't have much confidence in hospitals in those days, he says.

"When I first came, it was good for a column in the front page of the newspapers when a prominent man came here," he says with a grin. "People thought he was as good as dead." True, he adds soberly and proudly. "We have 260 patients or something like that now, and Vassar has always been classed as a number one hospital as long as I have known it."

Mr. Hughes was born in Walden, Orange County, June 23, 1860. He remembers hearing his father read items about the Civil War soldiers parade on the race track at Goshen, near his home.

When he was five or six he moved with his family to New London, Connecticut. His first job was as a farmer in Connecticut. He later went to New York to learn the plumbing trade, but gave it up because it was too dirty. He didn't like the jobs he had to do right after breakfast, he says with a characteristic grin.

So he went to Newburgh to work as a porter in the United States Hotel. When James A. Griggs, the proprietor bought the old Morgan House in Poughkeepsie, he came here in 1882 to do the same work. He later worked for the New York Central railroad and the old Buckeye mowing machine works that had a river front plant where the Moline Plow company was located later.

Mr. Hughes didn't like machine shop work any better than he had plumbing, porter's work and railroading. His next job was at Locust Bluff, the Red Oaks Mill home of F. J. Allen. Here he took care of the property and the four horses that Mr. Allen left in the country during the winter. Mr. Allen was the proprietor of the old Astor House in New York City, that was way down town, at Chambers Street and Broadway, Mr. Hughes thinks.

"Mr. Allen knew all the presidents," he recalls. "They all used to stop at the Astor House when they came to New York. There weren't any big uptown hotels then. Why did I leave him?" His blue eyes snap. "Because he used to come in around 10 or 11 o'clock at night with a big gang and want to start a party. You can't work night and day too. I knew the gardener here, William Millbank. That's how I got the job."

Vassar had opened in 1887, and still had 40 beds when he went to work there April 1, 1895. The original brick building is still in use, the west section of the present hospital. Dr. Bayley was resident physician as well as superintendent in 1895 and seven other doctors were on the staff. "Miss Gertie Deyo" of New Paltz was head nurse and the other nine nurses were all students taking the two year training course.

"They didn't accept money from patients at first," Mr. Hughes says, watching for your reaction of surprise. "Oh, maybe some of them paid, but when the others offered to pay, they'd say, 'We don't want your money. We just want your thanks."

When the patients were well enough to be up and around, they used to help the nurses do the ward work—wash dishes, sweep the floor, anything they were asked to do. There were signs hanging up saying that patients were to do those things where they were able. Of course, you couldn't get some of them to do any work, and the others were willing to do anything they could.

Jimmy Hughes at the Vassar Brothers Hospital barn. Dutchess County Historical Society Collection.

"Sure. The nurses used to do just like housework on the wards then. They washed dishes and swept and dusted. There was just one ward maid. She'd come around and mop the floors after the nurses had swept them. There weren't so many patients for them to look after in those days. Sometimes ward 4—that's the women's medical ward—would be shut up for six months at a time."

Mr. Hughes "did everything" during his first years at the hospital. His primary job was building maintenance. He did carpentry work, took care of the plumbing and boilers, made certain that everything in the building was kept in order. Until the addition was built in 1922, he was responsible for all building maintenance and still works in the hospital shop.

In the early days he also had a variety of other duties. He helped with amputations, helped set legs and served as orderly. This included helping get patients off of the operating table to their rooms and in bed. Since there was no elevator, patients were carried up stairs.

"We had to carry them this way," he illustrates, holding his hands above his head. "Sure, I helped with the women as well as the men. Sometimes they were heavier than the men."

He wasn't called upon to carry patients from the operating room very often since there were only two or three operations a month, sometimes none in the early days. None was performed at night. Just the same, operations made everyone uneasy, since the hospital was lighted by gas until the early 1900s and artificial light was needed even for day time operations. "It was pretty dangerous when the doctors were using ether," he recalls. "They didn't like to do it, but they did. They'd leave a window open or something."

The ether cone that was first used was made of red composition rubber, slotted at regular intervals. Gauze was laced through the slots. After the cone was in position on a patient's face, ether was poured on the gauze. After an operation, the cone was washed, gauze and all and put on a window sill to dry.

"The dust would blow on it, but they'd use it, with the same gauze on the next patient," he says."I used to wonder about it sometimes. But I never said anything."

There was no instrument sterilizer in the 90s. Instruments were cleaned, then put in a dish of alcohol. The day before an operation, water that was to be used on a patient in the operating room was boiled for about half an hour. The next morning it would be heated up just before it was used.

"I remember when they'd just learned how to do appendicitis operations," he says. "One year five or six school teachers came to the hospital to have their appendixes out. During summer vacation. The first one died, so the others packed their grips and got right out without their operations."

During his first years at the hospital, the horse drawn ambulance was kept on the grounds in a shed near the present laundry, Mr. Hughes says. The horses were stabled at Pye's back of the old Poughkeepsie hotel that stood where the head of New Market Street is today. That meant that when the ambulance was needed the hospital sent uptown to the horses, which were brought down, harnessed to the ambulance then sent back uptown to pick up the patient. When he says the hospital "sent" for the horses, Mr. Hughes means telephoned. He points with pride to the hospital's low number, 24. It has had that number as long as he has been there.

From 1895 until 1907, Mr. Hughes worked 12 hours a day, from 6 until 6, and if some of his work was unfinished at 6 o'clock, he stayed until it was done. But in spite of his manifold duties inside the hospital, they accounted for only an hour or so some days. The rest of the day he worked outside helping the gardener.

Mr. Hughes remembers facts about the hospital buildings and grounds that most of us never heard. For example the stone wall that encloses the property is made of bastard granite. Each stone was numbered to go in its exact place when it arrived from Vermont. It took nearly two years to lay the wall with a hand derrick in the mid 90s.

Iron gates to the hospital; Designed in 1897 by Hendrik Van ingen, son of Vassar College Art Pro fessor Henry Van Ingen. Dutchess County Historical Society Collection.

Then the bell that hangs in the archway overlooking the river, it once hung in a mission in Cuba. The Vassars used to sell "lots of beer" in southern countries, because it was the only kind that would keep without ice. When the mission was destroyed by "fire or something," the Vassars brought the bell to Poughkeepsie on a sailing ship. At one time it hung in the brewery, and was rung whenever there was a fire in the neighborhood. "It's a pretty old bell, and it has a nice sound to it," Mr. Hughes says. "The date it was cast is on it. I don't recall exactly what it is, but I do know that the bell is over a couple of hundred years old."

Mr. Hughes doesn't belong to any clubs or lodges. Since his wife's death he has lived as well as worked at the hospital. Although he doesn't put in full time now, he does plenty. "I like to work," he says, "but I don't like to do the same thing day after day. Here there are so many different things to fix. I'm always learning something."

(Helen Myers' work is reprinted by permission of the Poughkeepsie Journal.)