page_title: Mabel Grouitch
section_title: The Mabel Grouitch Baby Hospital
hierarchical_section_title: Mabel Grouitch / Career / The Mabel Grouitch Baby Hospital
caption_attribution_description: English: Mabel Gordon Dunlop Grujić. Srpski (latinica)‎: Mejbel Gordon Danlop Grujić.
context_page_description: Mabel Grouitch was an American archeologist, philanthropist and voluntary nurse with the Red Cross in Serbia, during the two Balkan wars and World War I.
context_section_description: Early in July 1915, Grouitch, now the wife of the undersecretary of foreign affairs in Serbia, turned over a sum of money to the American Red Cross, and requested it to organize a unit consisting of two doctors and two nurses to proceed to Serbia with the necessary equipment and supplies to establish a hospital for infants and young children. These funds were collected as a result of her labors from philanthropic people in the United States, and from time to time since then other donations for the hospital came and were added to the fund.
  
  Dr. Louise Tayler Jones, of Washington, D. C, on Grouitch's request, volunteered to proceed to Serbia as medical director and organize the hospital, and Dr. Catherine Travis, of New Britain, Connecticut, was appointed assistant. Maud Metcalf and Grace Utley, two American Red Cross nurses, were assigned to duty as the nursing personnel of the hospital.
  In the middle of the war, Dr Jones and Dr Travis sailed on the steamship Vasilefs Constantinos, to Greece, reaching Piraeus on 19 July and Athens on 4 August. From there, they proceeded to Niš, the temporary capital of Serbia, which they reached 10 August. The two nurses sailed on  30 July on the steamship Patris with the entire equipment and the supplies for the hospital. They reported to Dr. Jones at Niš on 25 August .
  On 30 August, Mabel Grouitch arrived in Serbia with Elizabeth Shelley, an American woman, who had been acting as her secretary in the United States, and who proceeded to Serbia to work in the baby hospital as a volunteer nurse.
  The hospital was opened in Niš for the reception of patients on 29 August 1915, under the name of the Mable Grouitch Baby Hospital.
  Dr. Jones, after giving the hospital a good start, sailed from Saloniki, Greece on 30 September and reported to the United States on 22 October 1915. She was succeeded by Dr. Travis as director. Very soon afterward, Serbia was invaded by combined Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian forces, on 13 October, the baby hospital ceased to exist and became a field ambulance to care for the sick and wounded Serbian soldiers.
caption: Portrait of Mabel Grouitch
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