Josephine Shaw Lowell
*Josephine Shaw Lowell was born on this date in 1843. She was a white-American Progressive Reform leader in the United States in the Nineteenth century.
Josephine Shaw was born in the West Roxbury section of Roxbury, Massachusetts, into a wealthy New England family. Her parents, Francis George and Sarah Blake (Sturgis) Shaw, were Unitarian philanthropists and intellectuals who encouraged their five children to study, learn, and become involved in their communities. They lived for some years in France and Italy and then settled on Staten Island while Josephine (known as "Effie") was a child. Her brother was the Union Army officer Robert Gould Shaw.
Josephine Shaw married Charles Russell Lowell, a businessman, in 1863. She followed him to Virginia when he was called into service during the American Civil War. Lowell helped wounded men on the battlefield. She also prepared and sent parcels through the United States Sanitary Commission to soldiers on the front. Charles died in battle, less than a year after they were married and only one month before their daughter, Carlotta, was born. A young widow, Lowell moved back to Staten Island with Carlotta and lived with her parents.
After her father's death, she lived with her mother and daughter in New York City. She became a businesswoman and a reformer. Lowell was committed to social justice and reform and seized the opportunity to become involved in Progressive reform and the eradication of poverty. She is best known for creating the New York Consumers League in 1890 and was active in the Anti-Imperialist League, where she met other prominent Progressives. She served as Vice-President of the League from 1901 to 1905 and was an advocate of Philippine independence.
She once said, "If the working people had all they ought to have, we should not have the paupers and criminals. It is better to save them before they go under than to spend your life fishing them out afterward." She died of cancer on October 12, 1905, at her home in New York City, and is buried with her husband at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Josephine Shaw Lowell Memorial Fountain in Bryant Park, which is behind the New York Public Library Main Branch building, was dedicated in 1912. The fountain is reportedly New York City's first public memorial dedicated to a woman.
