| Creator | McMahon, Katherine, 1875-1965 |
| Title | Katherine McMahon papers |
| Dates | 1939-1969 |
| Identification | MS 60 |
| Quantity | 0.5 linear feet (1 manuscript container) |
| Collection Abstract | The Katherine McMahon papers consist of course materials, awards and honors (some in the form of letters), publications, photographs, and miscellaneous items. The collection focuses on her professional life. |
| Historical Abstract | Katherine "Kate" McMahon taught at the Simmons College School of Social Work from 1914-1947. Influenced by the movement for Social Work in Medicine, McMahon contributed to shaping professional social work in the United States, serving a 30-year term as Educational Secretary of the American Association of Medical Social Workers from 1925-1955. |
| Language | Material in English. |
| Location | Collection may be stored offsite. Please contact Archives staff for more information. |
Collection is open.
Copyright for materials resides with the creators of the items in question, unless otherwise designated.
Please contact the College Archivist with requests to publish any material from the collection.
[Identification of item: description and date], Katherine McMahon Papers, MS 60, Simmons College Archives, Boston, MA, USA.
Papers were transferred to the Archives from the library of the Simmons College School of Social Work in 1985. Kate McMahon donated some of the material in 1965, Harriet M. Bartlett donated course programs and reading lists in 1966, and Agnes Schroeder and Elizabeth Rice each donated photographs. A scrapbook containing some of these materials, put together by the Social Work librarian, was disassembled for this collection.
Accession number: 85.004
Processed by Jeffrey D. Marshall, April 1986
Supervised by Megan Sniffin-Marinoff, April 1986
This collection guide was encoded as part of the LEADS project by Rebecca L. Meyer, February 2013.
Kate McMahon was born in New Britain, Connecticut in 1875. Little is known of her early life, but after graduating from the Connecticut Normal School in New Britain in 1904, she attended Columbia University Teacher's College before teaching for several years in New York City.
McMahon received her degree in social work from Simmons College in 1910. Attracted to the movement for social work in medicine, she found employment with the Social Service Department of the Boston Dispensary, and served on its executive staff from 1912 to 1917. Over the years McMahon expanded her professional interests in many directions. In 1914, she was appointed Lecturer at the Simmons College School of Social Work and became an Associate Professor in 1925. During World War I, she served as Assistant Director of Home Service for the New England Division of the American Red Cross, and after the War became its Director of Hospital Service.
In 1925, McMahon began a 30-year term as Educational Secretary of the American Association of Medical Social Workers, a position of great influence in the field. As Educational Secretary, she assisted social work schools and medical schools in developing curricula in medical social work. Through this work and her teaching at Simmons, McMahon contributed both to the development of professional standards in Social Work and to the body of knowledge upon which the profession is based.
While she published little, her contributions to the development of professional social work in America through her consulting work and teaching were recognized by Western Reserve University in 1953, resulting in an honorary degree of Doctor in Humanities.
Kate McMahon retired from her teaching career at Simmons in 1947. Her service to the American Association of Medical Social Workers ended in 1955 when that organization and several others joined to form the National Association of Social Workers. McMahon died in Boston on September 25, 1965.
The Katherine McMahon papers contains awards and honors, publications, photographs, and miscellaneous items. McMahon's course materials and the bound volume of her lectures as transcribed by a student provide information about her philosophy of social work and her teaching methods. Very little of the material gives insight on McMahon's personal life, though the collection of letters presented to her in 1951 as a tribute to 25 years of work as Educational Secretary of the American Association of Medical Social Workers testifies to her great popularity and professional esteem. Most of these letters were written by her professional associates in Social Work schools across the country. Two Kate McMahon Memorial Lectures were held, in 1967 and 1969.
These and related materials may be found under the following headings in online catalogs.
Collection is arranged into one series:
Related collections in the Simmons Archives include the Richard C. Cabot papers (MS 62) and the Massachusetts Conference on Social Work records (MS 26).
Box 1
