Early Career
With no formal training, Maxwell first entered the nursing field as a matron at New England Hospital in 1874. She left in 1876 and spent two years in England before enrolling at Boston City Hospital Training School for Nurses. In 1880 she was hired to start a training school at Montreal General Hospital. In 1881, she was offered the superintendency of the Training School for Nurses at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. In 1889, she moved to New York to be director of nursing at St. Luke's Hospital, and from there became superintendent of nursing at the Presbyterian Hospital of New York from 1892-1921. Maxwell was also the first director of the Presbyterian Hospital's nursing school, founded in 1892, which later became the Columbia University School of Nursing. Eleanor Lee writes in the "History of the School of Nursing of the Presbyterian Hospital, New York, 1892-1942", that Maxwell, born in New York but of Scottish descent, was recruited for the position by Mr. John Stewart Kennedy, a wealthy Scottish financier who was then serving as the Presbyterian Hospital's President of the Board of Trustees. In the school's early years, Mr. Kennedy donated $1 million for construction of a dormitory for the nurses.
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