Charlotte Denman Lozier 1844 - 1870

Charlotte Denman Lozier 1844 - 1870 homeopath, Professor of Physiology and Hygiene at the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women, and daughter in law of Clemence Lozier. Charlotte was a close friend of Mary Baker Eddy, Julia Ward Howe and Susan Brownell Anthony.

Charlotte graduated from high school with high honors and wasted no time in returning to New York to study what she loved - medicine. To become a doctor was her dream and little did she know that where she decided to study, the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women, she would find her love, her life, and sadly, her death.

Her love was Dr. Abraham Witton Lozier, son of Dr. Clemence Lozier (Lozier’s surviving seventh and last son (Abraham) followed in his mother’s footsteps, also becoming a (homeopathic) doctor), who founded and chartered the college and hospital. He found her sharp mind and unrelenting quiest irresistible.

Charlotte was a go-getter and often challenged male doctors to allow the women students to attend the lectures and clinics which was no easy feat at this time in medical history. The men jeered and harassed the women, but Charlotte would have none of that and often led the way herself to the wards and operating rooms and defied tradition…

Charlotte’s letters on medical subjects and her reputation as a thoroughly educated physician opened the way for her lectures and public addresses concering women’s rights. She became Vice-President of the National Workingwomen’s Association and travelled extensively.

While a student, she organized a successful protest against Bellevue Hospital’s refusal to extend clinical privileges to medical women… In addition to her medical work and suffrage advocacy, Lozier belonged to Sorosis (“Sisterhood”), an early professional women’s support network.

She served as first vice president of the National Working Women’s Association, an organization that sought improved labor conditions for women of all socioeconomic classes…

Lozier’s passions came together in her defense of Hester Vaughan, an immigrant servant impregnated and then abandoned by her Philadelphia-area employer. The child died soon after birth. While no legal charges were brought against the baby’s father, Vaughan was accused on shaky ground of infanticide and sentenced to death.

Feminists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton rallied to her aid. Lozier gave Vaughan free medical care and presented exonerating medical and psychological evidence at a large public meeting organized on Vaughan’s behalf. Eventually Vaughan was pardoned and returned to her home in England…

More than anything else, she was praised in her time for defending a young pregnant woman and unborn child against abortion. The patient, Caroline Fuller, had come to Lozier’s office in search of a “termination” apparently at the urging of her sexual partner, an older married man named Andrew Moran.

Lozier counselled against this course of action, while kindly offering her services to help Fuller bear the child. Moran grew irate and abusive, especially after Lozier refused the large bribe he offered her to carry out his wishes. She sent for a policeman and had Moran arrested.

Lozier was criticized for violating privacy. But the radical feminists press cheered her for “shielding her sex from the foulest wrong committed against it” and for “coming out firmly to stay the prevalent sin of infanticide.”

It is possible that Lozier’s empathy for Caroline Fuller and the unborn was heightened by the fact that she was pregnant at the time. Just weeks later, Lozier, only 25 years old, died in childbirth.

Her untimely and widely mourned death was not blamed on the baby, nor on the innate inferiority of the pregnant female body. It was attributed to the urgent need for advances that would not come unless the medical profession and society as a whole became more sensitive to women. continue reading:

Of interest:

Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier 1813 - 1888 graduated in medicine from the Syracuse Eclectic College in 1853 and opened a medical practice in New York.

Jeanne de la M. Lozier -1915, second wife of Clemence Lozier’s son Abraham Witton Lozier, was Vice President of Sorosis and Dean of Clemence Lozier’s New York Medical College and Hospital for Women. Jeanne died in 1915.