The month of March is designated as Women's History Month, when we honor the extraordinary achievements of women in American History.

Scarsdale can lay claim to a most unique distinction. It is the birthplace of the first woman in New York City to become an ambulance surgeon and the first woman to secure a surgical residency in a New York City hospital.  

Emily Dunning Barringer was born on September 27, 1876 to Edward J. Dunning and Frances Gore Lang. Her family was quite well-to-do, but financial reversals forced the Dunnings to relocate to Europe in 1886.

Mrs. Dunning valued the importance of education for her daughter's future, and vowed to see her daughter attend college. Returning to the United States, a few years later, Mrs. Dunn sought the advice of Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi who recommended that Emily enroll in Cornell University's medical preparatory program.  With the financial backing of her uncle, Henry Sage, and other relatives, Emily began her studies.  Upon her graduation in 1897, Emily set her sights on attending the College of Medicine of the New York Infirmary, which merged with the new Cornell University School of Medicine the following year.  

Dunning graduated second in her class from Cornell Medical School and won top bids for positions at both Mount Sinai and Gouverneur Hospital in New York City.  However, she was denied both appointments because of her sex.    

Upon learning of Dunning's plight, the reform minded mayor of New York City, Seth Low, set out to make sure that Dunning be placed. Taking the medical board certification examinations, for a second time, Dunning was placed at Gouveneur Hospital, where in 1902, she began her two year residency as the first woman ambulance surgeon in New York City.   

As the city's only woman ambulance surgeon, Dr. Dunning attracted much attention and comment in the media. She became known as "the beautiful girl in the Bowery Run" during the year her route included the lower East Side of Manhattan.  But the publicity also exacted a heavy price, for she was often the subject of  vocal harassment.  There were loud cries from her male colleagues against her appointment.   

Emily married Benjamin Barringer the day after she completed her medical residency in 1904. The following year, Dr. Barringer formally joined the staff of Gouverneur Hospital, becoming the first woman to serve in such a capacity in a New York Hospital.   

During the First World War, Dr. Barringer served as Vice Chair of the American Women's Hospitals War Service Committee of the National Medical Women's Association.  She led a fundraising drive to provide for the procurement of ambulances to be sent to the European battlefields.   

After the war, Dr. Barringer  joined the gynecological staff at New York Polyclinic Hospital.  She also devoted time to the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, where she served as an attending surgeon.  Dr. Barringer specialized in the study of venereal diseases.  She became an attending surgeon at Brooklyn's Kingston Avenue Hospital and subsequently became its director of gynecology.    

In her later years, Dr. Barringer was elected a member of the American Medical Association and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and of the New York Academy of Medicine.   

In, 1941 as America entered into World War II, Dr. Barringer, then president of the American Medical Women's Association, advocated for women's rights to hold appointments in the Army and Navy Corps. At the time, women were allowed to serve as contract surgeons in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, but as they were not commissioned officers, they could not receive the military benefits accorded to men.    

Barringer took her fight to Capitol Hill.  She chaired a special AMWA committee that petitioned Congress for military commissions for women physicians.  Her efforts were rewarded when the Sparkman  Act was signed into law, in April of 1943, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Retiring to a home in New Canaan, Connecticut, Dr. Barringer penned her autobiography, Bowery to Bellevue: The Story of New York's First Woman Ambulance Surgeon, in 1950. Two years later, the book was made into a motion picture entitled The Girl in White, starring June Allyson and Arthur Kennedy.  The movie told the story of Dr. Barringer's early struggles for acceptance by her male counterparts, who felt threatened by her skills.

A true pioneer for women in the medical field, Dr. Barringer died on April 8, 1961 at the age of 84.    

Scarsdale is indeed proud to call Dr. Barringer one of its own, and applaud her opening the doors for women in medicine.