User:JaneClawsten/Mary Josephine Crane

Josephine Crane Bradley (1886 – 1952) was an American playwright and dramatist, and wealthy heiress socialite. She was also known as Mary Josephine Crane.

Early life
Mary Josephine Crane was born to Charles Richard Crane, American diplomat, and Cornelia W. Smith Crane. Her father was a multimillionaire iron manufacturer and she grew up wealthy.

Josephine was born deaf. Her parents sought various solutions for her hearing impairment, including correspondence with Alexander Graham Bell. Through letters, Bell and Cornelia discussed Josephine's education. Bell advised that she be educated with other hearing children. She received voice training and her lip reading was so proficient that many people did not realize she was deaf.

Her mother developed an interest in educating children with hearing impairments because of her, and became president of the board of trustees of the McCowen Settlement House for Deaf and Dumb Children in Chicago.

She attended the University of Wisconsin Madison and gained a degree in agriculture. She was known as a very proficient student and remarkably intelligent. Her lip reading capability was well known, and she had an interpreter, Anna Camp, attend classes with her. Because of her dedication to learning, talents with communication, and hunger for knowledge, she was compared to Helen Keller.

In 1907 when she was 20 years old, her father gave her a farm near Lake Geneva, and personally directed the work there.

Marriage and children
While at UW-Madison, she enrolled in a chemistry course. The instructor was Harold Cornelius Bradley. On July 8, 1908, she married Bradley. As a wedding present, her father commissioned Alphonse Mucha to paint a portrait of her as the symbolic figure of Slavia, which was later used on the first Czechoslovak 100 koruna banknote.

Her children were:


 * Mary Cornelia Bradley (1909-1916)
 * Charles Crane Bradley (1911-2002)
 * Harold Cornelius Bradley (1913-1969)
 * David John Bradley (1915-2008)
 * Stephen Joseph Bradley (1916-2002)
 * Joseph Crane Bradley (1919-2002)

Bradley's first daughter, Mary Cornelia Bradley, died at ate 6 from the measles and meningitis. Josephine and Harold donated money to build the first children's hospital in Madison, named after their daughter. The Mary Cornelia Bradley Hospital for the Study of Children's Diseases opened in 1920, and was later changed into the American Family Children's Hospital.

While in Madison, the family lived in the Bradley House, commissioned by her father.

Death and afterward
Bradley died on January 26, 1952 in her home in Berkeley, California.

Career
Bradley was a dramatist and playwright. She was an accomplished ballroom dancer, despite her inability to hear the music.

Bradley may have been involved in the suffragist movement. In 1914, she helped arrange a talk by Crystal Eastman in Massachusetts.