Digital Bob Archive

Health care insurance programs have been around for a long time, and as with so many other programs, Juneau undoubtedly had the first one in Alaska. And that was very nearly 99 years ago.

The Catholic service organization, the Sisters of St. Ann, established St. Ann's Hospital here in September, 1886, and the following July the St. Ann's Hospital Society was announced and its rules were published in \"The Alaska Free Press,\" the local weekly paper. They were:

1. The object of this Society shall be mutual relief and gratuitous charity.
2. All persons in good health, without distinction of age, sex, creed or color, may become members of this Society.
3. The benefits of this Society are gratuitous admission into the hospital and, while there, medicines and medical attendance free of charge.
4. The monthly subscription is one dollar, payable in advance, to the Collector of the Society.
5. All benefits and privileges of the Society will forfeit after a lapse of three months without payment.
6. Patients desiring private room and special attendance will be furnished the same at $2.50 per day and upwards.
7. The surplus funds of the Society will be devoted to the gratuitous treatment of patients devoid of means.
8. Patients will be admitted only upon the certificate of the attending physician. No admission will be given to such as are affected with contagious or infectious diseases.
9. Convalescents and patients subject to incurable diseases shall in each case abide the decision of the attending physician.
10. Any person may have the attendance in the hospital of their own medical attendant at their own cost.

When the Society was organized, the hospital occupied one floor of a two-story building. That soon became inadequate and in 1889 the hospital expanded to the second floor and to an addition to the building. By the end of June, 1889, it had 25 beds.

The attending physicians were Dr. Hugh Wyman and Dr. James Simpson. Dr. Wyman had moved here from Sitka in 1885; Dr. Simpson arrived the following year. For a time he had his own hospital on Starr Hill, on the site of the playground known as the Chicken Yard. He was a Juneau resident until 1914 when he moved to Victoria, B.C., where he died the following year. Dr. Wyman was for a time the physician for the Treadwell Mine and his daughter, Prudence, born in 1886, was said to have been the first white child born on Douglas Island. After the family moved to Juneau they lived in a large house at Third and Seward, where the Behrends Building is today. They moved to Olympia, Washington in 1899 and the doctor died there in 1913.

The Collector for the St. Ann's Hospital Society was a local merchant and sometimes saloon owner, John L. Timmins. In 1898 he went to the Klondike and mined there until 1912 when he went to Los Angeles and established the Royal Gum Company. At the time of his death in 1924 the company was said to have some 10,000 penny gum machines in that area.
Unfortunately the membership and other records of the St. Ann's Society have not been found. It was active into the 1890s, then disappeared from the news if not from the scene.