Ellen F. Paine played a major role in guiding the new Eastern Maine General Hospital through its growing pains around the turn of the 20th century. Then, a century ago today, she opened her own hospital, the Paine Private Hospital. Forty years later, it became St. Joseph Hospital.

Paine was a pioneer in the formation of what became Bangor’s two hospitals, yet few people have ever heard of her. Unlike her contemporary, Bangor school superintendent Mary Snow, reputedly the first female school superintendent in Maine, no building memorializes her.

Paine was hired as the superintendent of what was then known as Bangor General Hospital in 1893. She replaced the first superintendent, who held the job only a few months. Within a few years the institution had been renamed Eastern Maine General Hospital, reflecting the fact it had become an important regional institution almost overnight.

Set up in an old stone house on State Street overlooking the Penobscot River, conditions were primitive. When one of the surgeons forgot his bone saw to perform an amputation, he sent out for a replacement found hanging from the wall of the patient’s woodshed. Gas lamps lighted the operating rooms until 1895, when electricity was instituted.

Money was scarce. Medicare, Medicaid and subsidized health insurance were things of the future. Hospital Sunday was established to collect donations at churches. Towns and churches could buy “free beds” for their needy. Such anecdotes about the early days at what became Eastern Maine Medical Center can be found in histories written by Dr. P. Maynard Beach and Ann Trainor.

Ellen Paine was a graduate of Massachusetts General Hospital’s nursing program. She managed Eastern Maine General Hospital’s finances. Under her administration, the first ward building opened in 1899 and planning for a children’s ward was launched. She helped guide the hospital through medical crises, including a typhoid epidemic when surplus patients slept in offices and linen closets. She trained and supervised nurses. She played an important public relations role at a time when some influential people opposed the hospital.

Then, with glowing testimonials, she resigned in 1906 to found her own hospital, an unusual undertaking for a woman then or now. One can find her motives by reading between the lines of her final report. After expressing her indebtedness to the doctors and other gentlemen who ran her work life, she wrote, “In my efforts to carry out their plans, and their rules made for my guidance, I have frequently been obliged to consult them and on all such occasions I have received generous and considerate treatment at their hands.” From now on the plans and the rules would be hers – and so would the hospital. She had declared independence.

“The early 20th century was the era of private hospitals, the forerunners of contemporary nursing homes, but which also replaced home delivery in maternity care,” according to Deborah Thompson in her history of Bangor architecture. Several were founded in some of the city’s oldest buildings after Paine started hers in a brand-new structure. By 1930, the Bangor city directory listed 10 of these small hospitals.

“MISS PAINE’S PRIVATE HOSPITAL NEARLY READY,” proclaimed a headline in the Bangor Daily News on Sept. 28, 1907. Designed by one of Bangor’s most important architects, Wilfred E. Mansur, the large building was situated on Center Street “on the lot just below the new Longfellow School.” A firehouse was across the road at the corner of Center and Montgomery.

The first floor contained an office, a reception hall, a big dining room and kitchen and four rooms for patients. The second floor contained more patient rooms, an operating room with windows that stretched from the floor to the ceiling on two sides for extra light, and an “etherizing room.” The third floor was for the use of nurses and servants. Doctors had rooms in the cellar.

Short stories in Bangor’s two daily newspapers covered the opening of the hospital on Nov. 5. Fifteen patients could be cared for. The rooms were large and attractively furnished and a number had private baths. The hospital was nonsectarian. All doctors were welcome. Patients would be received day or night. But this hospital was not for everybody. “It is a private institution and has no free beds,” said the Bangor Daily News.

Thirteen years later, on Sept. 4, 1920, Ellen Paine died at her hospital after a lengthy illness. Her obituary in the Bangor Daily News stated that she had been the sole owner and the person in charge of the hospital. Bangor had lost “a business woman of real value to the city.”

Another female entrepreneur, Carol Strauss, bought the hospital from Paine’s heirs and expanded it. In 1947, the Felician Sisters bought the hospital from Strauss, renaming it St. Joseph. The original building eventually was razed to make room for a more modern facility including more parking spaces. This year, the Felician Sisters are celebrating their 60th anniversary at the site.

Some years before, an anonymous Bangor Daily News reporter wrote that Paine had “fought a man’s battle in what was almost entirely a man’s world at that time.” Her life had consisted of “inspiring but unheralded deeds.” Speaking of both Paine and Strauss, the reporter wrote on March 5, 1938, “Some day it is hoped there will be greater awards of honor to women like Miss Strauss and her predecessor, Ellen Paine.”

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net Thanks to Eastern Maine Healthcare, St. Joseph Hospital and to Dick Shaw and Sara K. Martin for material for this column.