Mary Ann Vincent

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Mary Ann Vincent (Born September 18, 1818 Portsmouth, England - Died September 4, 1887) Boston, was a British born American actress

Although English born, she was the daughter of an Irishman named Farlin; left an orphan at an early age, she turned to the stage, making her first appearance in 1834 as Lucy in The Review, at Cowes, Isle of Wight. The next year she married James R. Vincent (who died in 1850), an actor with whom she toured England and Ireland for several years.

In 1846, the then Mrs Vincent went to America to join the stock company of the old National theatre in Boston, where she became a great favourite. The National Theatre burned in 1852, and thenceforth, until her death, Mrs. Vincent was connected with the company at the Boston Museum.[1]

[edit] Vincent Memorial Hospital

Her memory is still honoured by the Vincent Memorial Hospital, founded in Boston in 1890 by popular subscription, and which was formally opened on April 6, 1891, by Bishop Phillips Brooks, as a hospital for wage-earning women and girls.

The hospital was originally dedicated as being for the care of "sick and indigent women". When it first opened it was located at 44 Chambers Street in the West End of Boston, near the Massachusetts General Hospital, but soon outgrew its initial modest 10 bed capacity and so in 1908, it moved to larger premises on South Huntington Avenue, where it remained until 1940.

In 1940, the Vincent's then chief of staff, one Dr. Joe Vincent Meigs, and the other Vincent Hospital Trustees recognised that there was tremendous potential in them merging their hospital with the broader resources of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and so accepted the MGH's offer to become its gynecology service while still retaining its own identity.