Ethel Sturges Dummer (1866–1954) was a Chicago-based progressive activist, writer, and philanthropist whose interests encompassed child labor laws, prison reform, education, psychology, and conservation.
She extended financial support to entities such as the Juvenile Psychopathic Institute and to prominent psychologists, psychiatrists, and sociologists including Adolf Meyer, Thomas Eliot, William Alanson White, Trigant Burrow, Katharine Anthony, Jessie Taft, and others.
[4] She helped found the Illinois Society for Mental Hygiene and served on the boards of the City Club of Chicago, and the National Probation Association.
[6] In September 1917 Dummer was invited by Raymond Fosdick to join the Committee on Protective Work for Girls (CPWG), along with Maude Miner, Abby Rockefeller, Vera Cushmann and Martha Falconer.
[9][10] Foslick didn't provide the committee with enough money to implement an individual casework model and so Dummer funded the CPWG herself within a few months of joining.