Home Massachusetts A Day in the Life of Louisa May Alcott, Civil War Nurse

A Day in the Life of Louisa May Alcott, Civil War Nurse

by
20 comments

Louisa May Alcott, Civil War nurse, was 500 miles from her home in Concord, Mass., alone, doing painful duties all day long and yet constantly excited.

She had volunteered as a Union nurse at Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown. She called it the ‘hurly burly hotel.’ Alcott described it as cold, poorly ventilated and dirty, with no provisions for bathing. The staff tended 300 to 400 men in all stages of suffering, disease and death.

Louisa May Alcott kept a journal on which she partly based her first successful book, Hospital Sketches, a fictionalized account of her time at the hospital.  She first published them as articles on the abolitionist magazine Commonwealth, later as a book. Two months after her arrival, she contracted typhoid pneumonia and had to go home.

Illustration from a later edition of Hospital Sketches depicting John, a Virginia blacksmith

During a typical day, she rose at 6 a.m. and dressed by gaslight. She then opened the windows, though the wounded soldiers grumbled and shivered. “The air is bad enough to breed a pestilence;” she wrote, “and as no notice is taken of our frequent appeals for better ventilation, I must do what I can.” Odors from wounds, kitchens, washrooms and stables filled the air.

For breakfast she had ‘fried beef, salt butter, husky bread, and washy coffee.’ Her breakfast companions – eight women and a dozen men – she found both stupid and opinionated.

Louisa May Alcott, Civil War Nurse

Georgetown's Union Hotel. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Georgetown’s Union Hotel. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

“Till noon I trot, trot, giving out rations, cutting up food for helpless “boys,” washing faces, teaching my attendants how beds are made or floors are swept, dressing wounds, taking Dr. F. P.’s orders (privately wishing all the time that he would be more gentle with my big babies), dusting tables, sewing bandages, keeping my tray tidy, rushing up and down after pillows, bed-linen, sponges, books, and directions, till it seems as if I would joyfully pay down all I possess for fifteen minutes’ rest.”

At noon the bell rang and the boys were served a dinner of soup, meat, potatoes and bread. It never entirely satisfies them. After dinner, some sleep, many read and others want letters written.

“This I like to do,” wrote Alcott, “for they put in such odd things, and express their ideas so comically, I have great fun interiorally, while as grave as possible exteriorally. “ Sometimes she had to answer letters from friends after someone died. She called it “the saddest and hardest duty a nurse has to do.”

At 5 p.m. everyone who could run did run for supper. Then they sat down for the evening amusements. Those included newspapers, gossip, the doctor’s last round, and, for such as need them, the final doses for the night.

Louisa May Alcott as a Civil War Nurse

Louisa May Alcott, Civil War nurse

Sleep and Death

At 9 p.m. the bell rings again, the gas turned down and the day nurses go to bed, she wrote. “Night nurses go on duty, and sleep and death have the house to themselves,” she wrote.

Her work changed to night watching, or half night and half day, from midnight to noon.

I like it, as it leaves me time for a morning run, which is what I need to keep well; for bad air, food, and water, work and watching, are getting to be too much for me. I trot up and down the streets in all directions, sometimes to the Heights, then half way to Washington, again to the hill, over which the long trains of army wagons are constantly vanishing and ambulances appearing. That way the fighting lies, and I long to follow.

This story about Louisa May Alcott Civil War nurse was updated in 2022.

20 comments

Jane McPherson Gustafson January 7, 2015 - 7:22 am

It is, RIH.

Dottie Burke January 7, 2015 - 5:35 pm

A tremendous talent inside and out!

Hannah Ropes Spends 6 Months in Kansas With Loaded Pistols and Bowie Knife - New England Historical Society March 25, 2015 - 8:59 pm

[…] her Kansas nursing experience to Washington, D.C., where she volunteered as a Civil War nurse with Louisa May Alcott. She caught typhoid pneumonia in the hospital and died on Jan. 20, 1863, at the age of […]

The Lousey Life of a 10th Vermont Civil War Soldier in Camp - New England Historical Society June 30, 2015 - 9:49 am

[…] He was one of four musical brothers who enlisted in the 10th Vermont Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. […]

Flashback Photo: The 20th Maine, Hardest Fighters Ever - New England Historical Society July 2, 2015 - 3:00 pm

[…] 20th Maine, one of the most storied regiments of the Civil War, reunited at Gettysburg in October 1889 and posed for this picture. The occasion was the dedication […]

Portrait of a Connecticut Yankee Peddler - New England Historical Society July 19, 2015 - 8:33 am

[…] have indeed been launched by men who started as peddlers. Among them: Thomas Edison, Bronson Alcott, Abraham Lincoln’s father and John D. Rockefeller’s […]

Elizabeth Jarvis Colt Survives To Make the Colt .45 - New England Historical Society August 23, 2015 - 8:53 am

[…] the Civil War raged in 1862, 35-year-old Elizabeth Jarvis Colt suddenly lost her beloved husband and year-old […]

In 1863, Anna Dickinson Takes New England by Storm - New England Historical Society January 18, 2016 - 10:56 am

[…] surrogates were important for informing and firing up voters. While many women aided the war effort as nurses, Dickinson was a rare bird at that time: a fire-breathing, fearless speaker who could out-talk and […]

The Vinegar Valentine That Ruined a Romance - New England Historical Society February 14, 2016 - 8:22 am

[…] for ridicule.' Whitney objected to the mean spirit of the vinegar valentines. Dating back to the Civil War, they were cheap cards that insulted the recipient. Typical of a vinegar valentine was […]

The Two Loves of Louisa May Alcott - New England Historical Society November 29, 2016 - 5:30 pm

[…] in poverty. She had been working and writing potboilers, which brought in a little money, and volunteered as a Civil War nurse in Washington, D.C. There she fell ill and returned home to Concord in […]

The Mad Hatters of Danbury, Conn. - New England Historical Society December 1, 2016 - 7:02 am

[…] in the factories was awful, and the symptoms of mercury poisoning were known by the outbreak of the Civil War. But it would take nearly a century before anyone did anything about […]

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day - Hope Surfaces from Despair - New England Historical Society December 17, 2016 - 8:34 am

[…] Longfellow had to travel to Washington to retrieve his son from the hospital. They arrived back at their Cambridge home on December 8, and a grim Longfellow set about the […]

Louisa May Alcott, Dangerous Fanatic, Kisses a Baby - New England Historical Society March 6, 2017 - 2:11 pm

[…] had volunteered as a Civil War nurse at Union Hotel Hospital in Washington, D.C. She called it the ‘hurly burly hotel.’ It […]

The Mad Hatters of Danbury, Conn. - New England Historical Society December 5, 2017 - 11:48 am

[…] in the factories was awful. By the outbreak of the Civil War, doctors knew the symptoms of mercury poisoning. But no one did anything about it for almost a […]

The 20th Maine Regiment, Hardest Fighters Ever - New England Historical Society February 21, 2018 - 10:49 am

[…] 20th Maine, one of the most storied regiments of the Civil War, reunited at Gettysburg in October 1889 and posed for the picture […]

Little Women Surprises Louisa May Alcott With Its Amazing Success - New England Historical Society March 11, 2018 - 8:28 am

[…] book only took a few months to write, but she had lost her health while nursing soldiers in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War. She suffered headaches and rheumatism, probably the result of the mercury doctors used to […]

Dorothea Dix and Franklin Pierce: The Battle for the Mentally Ill - New England Historical Society April 12, 2018 - 7:40 am

[…] to Europe to work on promoting the interests of the mentally ill there. She would later lead the Union Army’s nursing corps throughout the Civil War, where she generated controversy as […]

Louisa May Alcott, Spinster, Enjoys Valentine’s Day 1868 - New England Historical Society February 14, 2019 - 11:27 am

[…] of low-paying jobs available to women at the time. She had gotten sick five years earlier while volunteering as a Civil War nurse in Washington, D.C., and had suffered poor health since […]

Anna Lowell Woodbury, The Forgotten Cambridge Chef - New England Historical Society November 20, 2019 - 11:23 am

[…] Lowell's fellow lady nurses included Louisa May Alcott, the niece of New Hampshire Sen. John P. Hale and the daughter of a wealthy New York judge. It […]

The Ladies of Gray, Maine, Bury an Unknown Confederate Soldier - New England Historical Society May 23, 2020 - 12:37 pm

[…] On Aug. 9, 1862, Sgt. Colley was wounded in the knee at the Battle of Cedar Mountain in Culpeper, Va. Promoted to second lieutenant, the 29-year-old died of septicemia on Sept. 20 in a hospital in Washington, D.C. […]

Comments are closed.

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Join our mailing list to receive the latest artciles from the New England Historical Society

Thanks for Signing Up!

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Join Now and Get The Latest Articles. 

It's Free!

You have Successfully Subscribed!