Lucy Louisa Coues Flower

Lucy Louisa Coues Flower (born May 10, 1837, probably Boston, Mass., U.S.—died April 27, 1921, Coronado, Calif.) was an American welfare worker, a leader in efforts to provide services for poor and dependent children, to expand the offerings of public education, and to establish a juvenile court system.

After a year at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, New York, in 1856–57, Lucy Coues worked for two years as a draftsman in the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C. In 1860 she became a public-school teacher in Madison, Wisconsin, and in 1862–63, when the city’s public schools closed, she operated a private school. She married James M. Flower, a Madison lawyer, in 1862. After their move to Chicago in 1873, she devoted her time and energy to a variety of philanthropic activities, especially those dealing with children.

Lucy Flower became a member of the board of the Half-Orphan Asylum in 1875 and later of the Chicago Home for the Friendless. In 1880, with Sarah Stevenson and others, she helped found the Illinois Training School for Nurses, the first such school in Chicago, of which she was president for 11 years and a director until 1908. She led the fight for the establishment of a state industrial school for dependent boys, and though the bill she drafted to that end was defeated in the Illinois legislature, public interest brought about the opening of such a school under private auspices in Glenwood, Illinois, in 1889. In 1887 she joined in organizing the Protective Agency for Women and Children, and in 1888 she helped form the Lake Geneva Fresh Air Association to provide vacations for poor urban children. She was appointed to the Chicago Board of Education in 1891, a post she held for three years. During her tenure on the board she helped introduce kindergartens and manual and domestic training classes for the lower grades. In 1894 she was elected to the post of trustee of the University of Illinois; she was the first woman to hold a statewide elective office in Illinois. In the same year, she took part in the organization of the Chicago Bureau of Charities and was chosen its vice president.

In the late 1890s Flower lent her influence to the faltering campaign for the establishment of a juvenile court system in Chicago. With assistance particularly from Jane Addams and Julia Lathrop, she organized support for the plan, helped draft enabling legislation, and saw her work come to fruition in July 1899 with the creation of the Cook County Juvenile Court, the first of its kind anywhere in the world. She founded the Juvenile Court Committee to raise money for probation officers’ salaries, and she served frequently as a court adviser. In 1902 Flower moved with her husband to Coronado, California, where, after several years as an invalid, she died.