Lucy Helen Hospital

In the 40s and 50s there was a hospital located on Main Street in FItchburg, MA. On February 27th 1947 a child was born to Edna and Robert Hay who lived on Wheeler Road, Ashby. The basket pictured was a basket from that time frame. Parents would take their new baby home in the basket. At a yard sale this summer I received this basket. Who knows maybe this was the basket I was brought home in.   

If you were born in Fitchburg between 1922-1954, more than likely, you came into the world at the Lucy Helen Hospital. The three-story brick mansion at 879 Main Street was originally built about 1870 by a wool manufacturer named Abial Towne. His daughter, Sarah Towne married Charles Billings, treasurer of Fitchburg Savings Bank, and they made their home there for many years. The Billings would eventually sell it to John Sherriff, owner of Sherriff Woolen Mills. In 1921, Sherriff sold it to Mrs. Fay Crocker for a sum of $12,550.00. A year later, in 1922, Mrs. Crocker opened the home as a private maternity hospital. She named it after her mother, Lucy Bigelow and her husband Charles T. Crocker’s mother, Helen. The Lucy Helen Hospital operated privately and successfully for five years until Mrs. Crocker generously donated its buildings and grounds to Burbank Hospital under the conditions that it would only be used as a hospital and it would serve the women of Fitchburg. The Lucy Helen Maternity Hospital thrived for many years. In 1937, a Department of Obstetrics was established. Its success and that of its Pre-natal Clinic were credited with the Lucy Helen Hospital’s mortality rate being nearly 50% lower than that of the state average.

However, in 1954 due to growing inadequacies of safety and size, the Lucy Helen closed its doors, and the keys were returned to Mrs. Crocker. Space was made available at the Burbank Hospital for a temporary maternity ward until new accommodations could be built. Ever generous, Mrs. Crocker handed the keys to the Main Street property over once again. This time they went to Christ Episcopal Church to use the property as a hostelry for The Girls Friendly Society, an organization of the church. Years later, the city took over the old hospital property and that of the Lowe House property next to it. Both were razed in 1968 to make space for the U.S. Post Office that sits today on that same location where so many of us drew our first breath, right across from the Upper Common.