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Mary Elizabeth Garrett (5 March 1854 - 3 April 1915) was an American suffragist and philanthropist. She was the only daughter and youngest child of John W. Garrett, the great Railroad King in the nineteenth century and the president of Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B. & O.). Despite all the overbearing restrictions and stereotypes against women in the nineteenth century, Mary Garrett, a strong-minded and capable woman, winded up being one of the most influential philanthropists, reformers and suffragists. Well-known for her "coercive philanthropy," Mary Garrett gave money to start the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1893 and forced the school to accept female students "on the same terms as men." She also generously funded the Bryn Mawr College with a special requirement that her intimate friend, Martha Carey Thomas be the president. Like many other suffragists of the nineteenth century, Garrett chose not to marry; instead, she kept a lifelong working and emotional relationship with Martha Carey Thomas. In her final years, she worked on suffrage with her longtime friends Susan B. Anthony and Anna Howard Shaw. Devoting her life to philanthropy, woman suffrage and social reform, Mary Garrett broke through the forceful expectations on women in the Gilded Age and succeeded in helping women to receive higher education.

Childhood
Mary Elizabeth Garrett was born on March 5, 1854. Both of Mary's parents, John W. Garret and Rachel Ann Harrison are from prominent and wealthy families of Baltimore. Mary was the only daughter and youngest child of John W. Garrett, and her birth was announced in the newspapers. She was the favored child in the family, and her father often said, “I wish Mary had been born a boy!”

Garrett grew up in a powerful and wealthy family. After her father was elected president of B&O Railroad, the Garrets moved to a huge mansion in Mount Vernon Place. Although living in a luxurious house in the most prosperous area of Baltimore, Garrett had a lonely and unhappy childhood. Her youngest brother was 5 years older than her, and the age difference made her difficult to communicate with her brothers. She could hardly find any companions or friends. Moreover, according to her memoir, she had a serious trouble with the bone of her right ankle until she received effective treatment at the spas of Cape May.

Garret's childhood was drastically different from those of other girls in the nineteenth century. She learned about charitable works in her young age as both her parents and grandparents were profoundly involved in philanthropy. Furthermore, she eavesdropped on her father's conversations with famous politicians and businessmen at home during the Civil War. She was also greatly influenced by the Maryland women, who were acclaimed for their audacious deeds during wartime.

School life & Self-education
Garrett went to Miss Kummer's school when she was twelve. At school, she met two lifelong friends, Julia Rebecca Rogers, nicknamed "Dolly" and Elizabeth King, nicknamed "Bessie" by Mary. Both Dolly and Bessie were from well-known families deeply associated with the Garrett family in Baltimore. Dolly, who became the legal ward of Mary's father after her father's death, was the daughter of a steel magnate; Bessie, from a famous Quaker family, was the daughter of an associate of Mary's father. Garret was first very excited about school life and deeply enjoyed it, but she gradually got bored of it because of its conservative ideas regarding girl's education. The three girls formed their own study groups to learn biological science, and dissected a rat to everyone's horror. Disappointed with the lackluster school education, Mary quit school at age seventeen and never returned to school in the following years. She learned on her own at home and read literary classics. By self-education, she managed to speak fluent Italian and French and practiced German and Greek.

Adolescence
Adolescence was not a period of comfort and happiness for Garrett. She felt uncomfortable with the Victorian expectations on women and also the attitudes towards sex in her family. Every family member avoided sex-related topics on purpose, and she had to teach herself about puberty.

However, Garrett showed great talent in business in this time period. She was a careful and organized planner and managed her personal business matters well. Given a weekly allowance of five to ten dollars per week, she kept record of all expenses in her notebook. Besides, she kept all the letters from her friends, including Julia, Elizabeth and her relatives. She also kept a diary, which was given by the longtime friend of the Garret family, George Peabody, the respectable founder of the Peabody Institute and George Peabody Library in Baltimore.

After leaving school, Garrett continuously learned about commerce and the operation of railroad from her father, and later served as his secretary.

Adulthood
Garrett and her friends, including M. Carey Thomas, Mamie Gwinn, Elizabeth “Bessie” King, and Julia Rogers, were known as the “Friday Evening” because of their bi-weekly meetings on Friday evenings. "The Friday Evening," originally a book club and study group, aimed to improve girl's education and was active until 1895. The members of "The Friday Evening" started the Bryn Mawr College for Girls, am elite preparatory institution in 1885 through collective effort, and Garrett was the major financial supporter. Later on, Garrett shifted her focus to medical education. At the age of 22, Mary requested special permission from Daniel Coit Gilman, the first president of the Johns Hopkins University, to enroll in higher education, but was denied entrance due in part to her status as a woman. However, her opportunity to establish justice came soon after. When the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine was under construction in the late nineteenth century, the school board quickly ran out of the original endowment by Johns Hopkins. Garrett and her friends founded the Women’s Medical School Fund Committee and promised to make up for the deficit provided that women were accepted "on the same terms as men." The condition was accepted by the school board, and since then, medical education in the United States, once hardly open to females, had been greatly transformed. Garrett was also hugely involved in Women's suffrage movement, working with her friends Anna Howard Shaw, Julia Ward Howe, and Susan B. Anthony and serving as a major benefactor of the movement.

Garret spent her final years at the Bryn Mawr College with M. Carey Thomas. Thomas and Garrett shared the same campus home, "the Deanery" at Bryn Mawr.

Death
Garrett died at Bryn Mawr College in 1915 and was buried in Baltimore’s Green Mount Cemetery. She left most of her funds and properties to M. Carey Thomas in her will.

Secretary
Prior to inheriting a fortune of about $2 million following her father's death, Mary worked as a personal secretary for her father, John W. Garrett. She thus had opportunities to meet with the business magnates in America, including Carnegie, Morgan, Vanderbilt, Fiske, and Gould. This experience exposed Mary to professional finance and endowed her with the skills to be an effective negotiator and businesswoman. The future heiress to a multimillion fortune learned how to improve women's life and advance women's rights movement using great wealth.

Founder of the Bryn Mawr School for Women
Using her inherited wealth, Garrett helped found the Bryn Mawr School for Women, so named to reference the already-popular Bryn Mawr College of Pennsylvania, which focused on scholastic achievement in traditionally male-dominated disciplines, such as mathematics and science. She spent over $500,000 on the construction and decoration of the school, and she personally supervised most of the construction processes. Although she was greatly hailed for her work, her donations were also controversial at the time and sometimes criticized for breaking social norms. For instance, "The Kitchen Magazine asked, 'Why does not Miss Garrett or some other philanthropist invest a quarter of a million dollars in a model school of domestic economy, in which we prepare girls for housekeeping and homemaking,' adding that 'without thoroughly trained, competent housekeepers it is a folly to hope for well-trained, pleasant homes.'"

She also enriched Bryn Mawr College, donating $10,000 per year to help the college and paid all the bills of the school.

Benefactor of the Johns Hopkins Hospital
Garrett endowed the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine with $306,977. At first the president of Johns Hopkins University, Daniel Coit Gilman requested $100,000 to open the medical school, but he increased this amount to $500,000 even before the Women’s Medical School Fund Committee started to raise the money. The trustees of the WMSF reached the goal of $100,000 after two years of work, but the balance, more than $300,000, seemed intimidating. Garrett, failing to find another funder interested in the medical school project and disappointed by the trustees, finally donated $306,977 by herself to the medical school. She paid annual installments of $50,000 and also a 5% interest rate to the school until all the needed money was received by the school. This time she had even more stringent terms and conditions than the previous ones which accompanied the original $100,000 offer. She insisted that a "Women's Fund Memorial Building" be built in memory of the great women who contributed to the higher education. Also, she required that 'women "enjoy all the advantages on the same terms as men" as well as "all prizes, dignities, or honors" that were afforded male students.' She also added the date October 28th, 1890 in which the trustees of Johns Hopkins accepted the terms to accept female students, to the school calendar.

By forcing the university to accept females on the same basis as males, She secured the rights of women to receive medical education and made Johns Hopkins School of Medicine the first co-educational, graduate-level medical school in the United States.

Suffragist
Garrett was also heavily involved in the Women's Suffrage Movement, organizing the National American Woman Suffrage Association's national convention in 1906. Her friend, Susan B. Anthony, stayed at her home in Mount Vernon Place during the convention.

Garrett continued to donate heavily to the suffrage movement, giving $10,000~$20,000 annually until her death.