Call Number:

SC.221

Repository:

Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College

Extent:

.1 linear ft. (.1 linear feet (6 folders.))

Preferred Citation:

Cite as: Josiah P. Marvel, Quaker Emergency Service Records, SC/221, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College.

Date:

1942-1966 (inclusive)

Creator:

Quaker Emergency Service Readjustment Center (New York, N.Y.) and Marvel, Josiah P. (Josiah Philip), 1896-1959

Abstract:

Collection contains primarily Marvel's files on the wartime projects of the Quaker Emergency Service, 1942-1945, and its postwar Civilian Readjustment Committee, including typed minutes, 1947-1961. Also includes papers concerning the Spears Mobile Clinic which operated in Syria with the help of the Friends Ambulance Unit, including a typescript describing the mission; the dispersal of French funds, 1954-1958, raised by Mme. de la Noue for her Centre Guynemer and deposited with the Quaker Emergency Service in 1948; and the file of Katherine Cook, secretary, concerning the distribution of Service funds in 1961 and 1966.

Josiah P. Marvel (1896-1959) was a Quaker, born in Indiana and a graduate of Earlham College. He moved to New York City in 1929 and married Elinore Jacobs Strettenheim in 1941. He worked with the AFSC in France in 1940-41 and in 1942 became the chairman of Quaker Emergency Services in New York City. The Quaker Emergency Service was founded in January 1942 by members of the combined Peace and Service Committees of the two New York Monthly Meetings. Offering alternative service for conscientious objectors, it was authorized by the New York Office of Civilian Defense. After the war, the group formed the Civilian Readjustment Committee/Center and worked with psychiatric institutions. It focused particularly on male homosexuals and sex offenders. The Center was closed in 1951 and remaining funds of Quaker Emergency Services were allocated in 1961.