Kilmer House

In celebration of Women’s History Month this March, Kilmer House salutes all of the women of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies worldwide, from 1886 to the present.  Here are some facts about women in the early history of Johnson & Johnson:

1.  Half of the Company’s first 14 employees in 1886 were women.

2.  Johnson & Johnson pioneered many products in women’s health, including the first sanitary protection products in the late 1800s.  Here and here are some posts about how we advertised them at a time when you couldn’t mention sanitary protection in polite society!

3.  We also made maternal and child health kits to assist in safe childbirth at a time when most babies were born at home instead of in hospitals.   Here’s one of our maternal and child health kits from the 1890s.

Dr. Simpson’s Maternity Kit, 1890s

4.  In 1908, eight out of 36 department supervisors at Johnson & Johnson were women.  Women supervised many of the departments that were central to the Company’s business, such as the Aseptic Department (which oversaw the production of sterile surgical products), the Cotton Mill’s Finishing Department, the Sanitary Napkin and Plaster Finishing Departments, the Jar Finishing Department (many of our aseptic products were packaged in jars) and more.

5.  The Company’s tradition of employee volunteerism in the community started with women employees in the Laurel Club (an employee organization) 100 years ago.

6.  In 1908 the Johnson & Johnson Scientific Department had four scientists on staff.  One of them was a college educated female scientist.

7.  In the 1950s, DePuy (which became part of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies in 1998) had a female president, Mrs. Amrette Hoopes.  Here’s an article about her.

8.  We used to have a women’s basketball team!  Here’s a picture of them in 1907:

9.  One of the most successful advertising campaigns in Johnson & Johnson history featured the work of a prominent female artist, Gladys Rockmore Davis.

One of the Gladys Rockmore Davis paintings from one of our ads

10. During World War I, one of the women employees in the Advertising Department served as a chief nurse in the American expeditionary forces Army Nurse Corps in Siberia, becoming Chief Nurse of the evacuation hospital in Vladivistok, Russia. Though she worked in advertising at Johnson & Johnson, her background was in nursing, and she was one of the first to answer the call in 1917 when the American Red Cross put out an appeal for nurses.   Here’s a postcard she sent back to Johnson & Johnson from Siberia.

Here are some photographs of women throughout Johnson & Johnson history:

Women employees in the Aseptic Department in the earliest days of Johnson & Johnson

Some of the women who worked in the surgical suture plant in Australia in 1934

One of the employees at our former Eastern Surgical Dressings Plant in 1970

A Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies sales representative in Malaysia in 1971