Dressing for Health and Comfort
Since the females in the Walker household completed manual labor, the women did not often dress like typical Victorian Era women. In fact, Walker’s mother agreed with her daughter’s views that corsets and tight lace were restricting. As Walker grew, she kept these views. When she was a teacher, she was often criticized by her students and their parents for her attire. At one point, Walker was harassed by some neighbor and other boys, who threw eggs at her for her choice of clothing. IN medical school, Walker was often teased by both colleagues and patients.
However, this did not persuade Walker to dress more like a socially acceptable woman. By the start of the Civil War,
Walker’s typical attire was wearing trousers with suspenders under a knee-length dress with a tight waist and full skirt. When Walker was arrested in 1870, she was criticized and teased by the men in the prison because she dressed like a male. A year later, Walker wrote about women’s fashion, “The greatest sorrows from which women suffer to-day are these physical, moral, and mental ones that are caused by their unhygienic manner of dressing!”
Medical Practice
After graduating from Syracuse Medical College, Walker decided to open a practice. For a few years, she ran this practice with her husband, Albert Miller, who was also a physician. Unfortunately, Walker’s private medical practice never really did well. Walker lived in a time where women were just starting to enter the medical profession. Because of this, people did not often trust female physicians. On top of this, women were only not heavily supported socially, especially in a male-dominated field. This reasoning along with Walker divorcing her husband and the outbreak of the Civil War led to Walker closing her private practice.
Civil War
Immediately when the Civil War started, Walker tried to figure out what she could do to help. First, Walker went to Washington and decided to sign up to volunteer as a surgeon for the Army. Unfortunately, Walker was rejected merely because she was a woman. She was then offered an occupation as a nurse. She tried to decline and, once again, volunteer as a surgeon, but she was told she had to start off as a nurse, so she did. On July 21, 1861, Walker was a nurse for the First Battle of Bull Run. She was also a nurse for the patient hospital.
Once Walker became a surgeon in the Civil War, she became the first female Union Army surgeon for the military. As a volunteer surgeon, she was part of the Battle of Fredericksburg and the Battle of Chickamauga. Walker became employed through the Army of the Cumberland in the fall of 1863. She was given the title, “Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon.” Eventually, Walker would join the ranks of the 52nd Ohio Infantry as an Assistant Surgeon.