Jessie Hubbell Bancroft
1867-1952
American physical education was a new field of study when Jessie Hubbell Bancroft discovered it in the late 1800s. She was born in Winona, Minnesota and later studied at Winona Normal School where she was introduced to the Delsarte System of Physical Culture. She also studied for a year at Iowa Medical College. She eventually took some classes in Minneapolis from a student of Dudley Sargent, and later attended Dudley Sargent's Harvard Summer School in 1891.
In 1893, Bancroft was appointed Director of Physical Training of the Brooklyn Schools at an annual salary of $1,200. She became the Assistant Director of Physical Education of the schools of Greater New York City ten years later. Throughout her professional career, Bancroft wrote, taught and fought an uphill battle to help educators understand the importance of good posture and body mechanics in the school environment. Her 1913 book, The Posture of School Children, did much to awaken others to her insights, but sports and games were overtaking physical training during those years. Fortunately, copies of her book are still available through online rare books dealers. It is an extraordinary book well worth reading.
Bancroft and Dr. Eliza Mosher founded the American Posture League. She was the first woman in the field of American physical education to produce a considerable amount of professional literature on the topic of posture. As girls colleges in the Northeast began to take the posture issue seriously, careful evaluations led to a practice that today's educators find perplexing. Nude posture photos taken at that time brought scandal to Vassar College several years ago. Yale also found thousands of nude posture assessment photos, and burned them all. The notion of looking at the nude human body with an eye toward identifying deficiencies in symmetry, alignment and proportion is foreign today, but in Bancroft's time, it was still possible to consider the issue with the required maturity. Even into and after the 1940s, some schools were still taking the photos. The practice ended in 1950.
Dr. Eliza Mosher
1840-1928
The physical education profession did not yet exist in the United States when Eliza Maria Mosher was born 160 year ago in Cayuga, New York. She received a medical degree from The University of Michigan in 1875 and then spent a year studying in London and Paris medical clinics. Vassar College appointed her their resident physician in 1883. She was also given the additional task of organizing the physical education program.
Dr. Mosher introduced physical examinations for women students, and popularized the divided skirt, which eventually morphed into the bloomer of the 1890s. She left Vasser after three years, and spent ten years in private practice. In 1889, she became the first Dean of Women and the first Director of Physical Education for Women at The University of Michigan. She was the first female physical educator in the United States to earn the rank of professor. After three years, she returned to private practice.
Like Jessie Bancroft, Mosher was deeply committed to teaching others about the importance of good posture. She was also one of the founders of the International Medical Association. Many historians have called Dr. Eliza Mosher the Dean of American Medical Women.