Anne Murray Dike

Anne Murray Dike, 1916

Anne Murray Dike (1878-1929) was an American doctor, chair of the American Committee for Devastated France from 1917 and recipient of the Croix de Guerre and member of the Legion of Honour. ^[1]

Early life

She was born Anne Veitch Murray in Edinburgh Scotland about June 8, 1878. She immigrated to the United States about 1908 in which year she married Francis Harold Dike, a Columbia graduate and instructor in French and English at MIT (1900-10) whom she divorced in 1914.

World War I

Anne Morgan and Anne Murray Dike, ca. 1915

Anne Murray Dike joined philanthropist Anne Morgan in France. From 1917 to 1921 Morgan took residence near the French front, not far from both Soissons and the "Chemin des Dames" at Blérancourt, and ran The American Friends of France. It employed several hundred people, including domestic and foreign volunteers and financed in part from donations from the States.^[2] Of seeing the French countryside during the war, Dike said in 1919, "You can travel in a motor going forward in a straight line for fifteen hours and see nothing but ruins".^[3]

In 1924, Morgan and Dike both were made officers of the French Legion of Honor during a ceremony held at Blérancourt.^[4]

Death

Dike died on February 8, 1929, at the home she shared with Morgan at 43 Rue de Courcelles in Paris, due to complications of neoplastic myeloma.^[5] She is buried in the village cemetery at Blérancourt.

The estate of Blérancourt was transformed into a museum and inaugurated in 1930, one year after her death.^[6]

References

1. "Anne Morgan Feature". Life Magazine. February 11, 1952. pp. 28–29. Retrieved March 1, 2010.
2. Latimer, Tirza True (2005). Women Together/Women Apart: Portraits of Lesbian Paris. Rutgers University Press. p. 22. ISBN 9780813541198. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
3. Ruffino, Roberto; Chinzari, Stefania (20 October 2014). Where the Border Stands: From war ambulances to intercultural exchanges. HOEPLI EDITORE. ISBN 9788820364946. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
4. Association des travailleuses sociales (1931). Médaille d'or Anne Murray Dike: encouragement, perfectionnement, premier concours 1930. Paris: Impr. administrative. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
5. New York Times, Feb 20, 1929
6. The Anne Morgan Story, American Friends of Blérancourt