Person

Charlton, Margaret E.

• Charlton, Margaret Ridley, 1858-1931

1858-1931

Margaret Charlton was born on December 10, 1858 in Laprairie, a small town on the south shore of the St. Lawrence river near Montreal. She was christened Margaret Anne but later changed her second name to Ridley, to honour her descent from the family of the martyred Bishop Nicholas Ridley. Charlton completed a summer course at Amherst College in the newly developed field of librarianship, and is thought to have studied under Melvil Dewey. She began working at the McGill University Medical Library in 1895, shortly after the Library's founding on August 27, 1823. The Medical Library part of the University's Faculty of Medicine and, as was common practice in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a faculty member held the title of "Librarian". Charlton was appointed to be the library's first Assistant Librarian in 1896, likely the first person with any formal library training to work at McGill University. The following year, the British and Canadian medical associations held a joint meeting in Montreal, and it was probably here that Charlton first met Dr. William Osler. William Osler and Margaret Charlton became involved in the formation of the Association of Medical Librarians, founded on May 2, 1898, by four librarians and four physicians who met in the office of the Philadelphia Medical Journal, at the invitation of its editor, George M. Gould, M.D. The object of the Association was the fostering of medical libraries and the maintenance of an exchange of medical literature among its members. Membership was limited to librarians representing medical libraries of at least 500 volumes, with regular library hours and attendance. Charlton served as the Association's first Secretary from 1898-1903 and again from 1909-1911, after it had become (in 1907) the Medical Library Association. She remained at the McGill Medical Library in the position of Assistant Librarian until 1914, when she resigned under less-than-happy circumstances, and moved to Toronto as Librarian of the Academy of Medicine. In 1922 she resigned from the Academy, also under unpleasant circumstances, and returned to Montreal to live with her sisters. She died there on May 1, 1931 and is buried, with her mother and two of her three sisters, in Mount Royal Cemetery.

July 2022; biography adapted from "Margaret Ridley Charlton: pioneer medical librarian," by David S. Crawford, Emeritus Librarian, McGill University.

https://www.mcgill.ca/library/branches/osler/charlton