Dr. Mary Amanda Dixon Jones Trials: 1890 & 1892

Born in 1828 on the Eastern Shore of Maryland to the family of a Methodist minister, Mary Dixon Jones graduated from Wesleyan Female College in Wilmington Delaware, in 1845. She stayed on there and taught physiology and literature for two years and then moved to the Baltimore Female College, and then became principal of a girls' seminary in southern Maryland. She began reading medicine under two doctors, a standard method of medical education in that era. In 1854, she married a lawyer, John Quincy Adams Jones, and the couple lived briefly in Illinois and Wisconsin.

In 1862, Dixon Jones formally studied medicine in New York City, receiving a degree from the Hygeio Therapeutic Medical College. After the Civil War, she settled in Brooklyn and established a small medical practice. In 1872, at the age of 44, Dixon Jones entered Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia for a three-year term of study, with special training in surgery. Returning to Brooklyn, she reopened her medical practice and founded the hospital that soon became the center of the newspaper expose.