Emily Wayland Dinwiddie was a social worker and reformer. Born in Virginia, she helped to professionalize and systematize social work. She drew on her experience as a tenement inspector in New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh to write handbooks, manuals, and forms. In her reports Dinwiddie placed an emphasis on maintaining high standards of public health and sanitation in city tenements. In 1918 she joined the American Red Cross in France, and continued to work for the organization until 1922. Five years later Dinwiddie became director of the Children’s Bureau at the Virginia State Board of Public Welfare. She also took a leave of absence to write Virginia State Hospitals for Mental Patients (1934), a comprehensive report of the state’s public mental hospitals. Dinwiddie moved to Kansas in 1934 to work for the Emergency Relief Administration. She retired from public service in 1938 and died in Virginia in 1949.
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