Alice Bunker Stockham
American obstetrician, gynecologist and activist (1833–1912)
Alice Bunker Stockham (November 8, 1833 – December 3, 1912) was an American obstetrician and gynecologist who was the fifth woman to become a doctor in the United States. She promoted gender equality, dress reform, birth control, and male and female sexual fulfillment for successful marriages.
Leo Tolstoy and Havelock Ellis were among her friends. She visited Sweden and from her trips to schools there she brought back the idea of teaching children domestic crafts, establishing shop and home economics classes in the United States.
Her children were William Henry Stockham (1861–1923) founder of Stockham Valve and Fittings Inc. and Cora L. Stockham (1857–?)
Activism
Stockham was born in Cardington, Ohio, on November 8, 1833, and received her MD from the Chicago Homeopathic Medical College in 1892.
She lectured against the use of corsets by women, advocated complete abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, and believed in women's rights. Stockham was a vegetarian. In 1893, she was a speaker at the Third International Vegetarian Congress in Chicago.
Stockham was concerned with the economic plight of divorced women with children and prostitutes who wanted to get off the street.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q438428. VIAF identifies the subject as 42664877. The Library of Congress control number is no90019307. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1833, 1912, 1861 and 1923.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alice Bunker Stockham” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.