Inventor and scientist Bessie Virginia Blount, was the first American woman admitted as a student at Scotland Yard.

Born in Chesapeake, Virginia (formerly known as Hickory), on November 24,1914. Blount had to discontinue her elementary education, although she would later earn a GED as her family moved to New Jersey. She studied nursing in Newark, developing a passion for physical therapy, a profession first established in 1914.

She obtained certification in physical therapy from Montclair State University and was one of the few African American physical therapists at the time. As wounded soldiers returned from World War II, Blount practiced at various veterans’ hospitals restoring physical function to wounded soldiers. Much of the equipment in use at the time was inadequate, Blount found innovative ways to rehabilitate her patients. In particular, she helped arm amputees compensate by teaching them to use their feet. She also created a food receptacle equipped with an electrical motor that propelled food through a protruding tube inserted into the patient’s mouth. Upon biting down on it, a small portion of food was pushed into the mouth. The apparatus allowed patients to eat independently and comfortably in an upright or level position. Blount received a patent on her “Portable Receptacle Support” on April 24, 1951, and a year later, the French Government purchased the patent rights and put the machine to widespread use in military hospitals across the country and in some of its colonies. This ingenious apparatus positioned Blount as one of the earliest inventors in the burgeoning field of physical therapy.

Blount additionally invented a disposable cardboard emesis basin, a device still standard in Belgian hospitals today. In 1953, she was the first black woman to appear on the television program The Big Idea, which exposed her inventions to a popular audience.

In 1969, she began a second career in forensics as a chief examiner for police departments in Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia. She was the first American woman admitted as a student at the Document Division of the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory in London, England (Scotland Yard) in 1977. An outspoken advocate of equal rights for the marginalized, she maintained a private practice as a consultant to law enforcement and law firms on legal strategy and procedure until 1983. Bessie Blount died on December 30, 2009 in Newfield, New Jersey. She was 95 years old.

Sources: Association of Women in Science; Blackpast.org; Changemakers: University of Virginia.edu

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