Margaret Irving Handy

Who was Margaret Irving Handy?

Margaret Irving Handy was a pioneering doctor who was one of the first to specialize in pediatric medicine. In 1945, she established the first mothers' milk bank at Delaware Hospital in Wilmington, Delaware.

Handy was born in Smyrna, Delaware and was the daughter of L. Irving Handy, a U.S. Representative. She attended Goucher College and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine from which she graduated in 1916. She was the first native-born female Delawarean to become a doctor and was also the state’s first pediatrician.

In 1918, during an outbreak of Spanish influenza in the Wilmington area, Handy was asked by the Board of Health to open a paediatric ward at People's Settlement staffed by volunteers and with very little equipment. She subsequently established a pediatric clinic and became Assistant Chief, and in 1921, Chief, of Pediatrics at Delaware Hospital where she set up a nursery for premature babies. Handy collected surplus breast milk in the community to feed the babies of mothers who could not breast feed, and in 1945 founded the Mother's Milk Bank with Margaret Trentman, a hospital board member whose baby son had died because she was unable to nurse him.