Rebels at the Bar

by Jill Norgren

  Over the opposition of her family, Emma Gillett traveled from Wisconsin to Washington in order to read law with Lockwood. She apprenticed for a year, enrolled in Howard University’s Law Department, and in June 1883 was admitted to the D.C. bar. Gillett took Lockwood as her inspiration but followed her own star as an attorney. She was less outgoing than her mentor and chose the back office, where she thrived. She refused all jury cases. She became a chancery examiner and won a notary appointment from President Arthur following Ricker’s successful campaign to open this office to women. Gillett joined a small D.C. firm headed by Watson J. Newton, where she stayed for the rest of her career, making partner in the late 1890s.

  Lavinia Dundore was another woman often seen with Lockwood. They began working together on pension claim cases after encountering one another at either a Universal Peace Union or a suffrage meeting. For a short time, Dundore boarded at F Street and helped Lockwood with correspondence and accounts. Dundore, who was not a lawyer, shared Lockwood’s and Ricker’s feelings about workplace discrimination. She joined their fair employment campaign. While Lockwood was lobbying Congress for legislation to help women lawyers, and Ricker was challenging the government to license her as a notary, Dundore went up before the judges of the District Supreme Court with an application to become Washington’s first woman constable and bill collector.42 Unlike her friends, she did not succeed.

  Lockwood’s own success did not come quickly, but when it happened she became a national figure. In 1879, five years after the Drake court refused to admit her to the court of claims bar, she was sworn in as the first woman member of the Supreme Court of the United States bar. The contest, according to Lockwood, was a bruising one that called for an “unconscionable” deal of lobbying in which nothing was “too daring.”43

  First, she attempted to convince members of Congress that they should enact a law that no qualified woman attorney should be barred from the practice of law before any United States court because of sex or coverture. She petitioned members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, without success, leaving her no choice but to try another strategy.

  Lockwood knew that the Rules of Practice of the United States Supreme Court permitted an attorney to apply to its bar after practicing for three years before the highest-level state or territorial court, a requirement she met in the autumn of 1876. She reasoned that success at the high court would end resistance to her candidacy in the other federal courts. Her friend Albert Gallatin Riddle, a former congressman and D.C. district attorney, moved her admission. On November 6, 1876, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite announced that a majority of justices had voted against the motion, noting that they did not “feel called upon to make a change until such a change is required by statute.”44 The vote was six to three, with Waite voting to admit Lockwood despite the fact that he often backed away from judicial intervention in favor of legislative action.

  Lockwood responded by giving a brilliant speech at the January 1877 convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and encouraging journalists, including her daughter Lura, who wrote a column for the Lockport Daily News, to cover the story. She persuaded Missouri congressman John Montgomery Glover to introduce anti-discrimination legislation. Titled “An act to relieve the legal disabilities of women,” H.R. 4435 (later renumbered 1077 and renamed “An act to relieve certain legal disabilities of women”) started a two-year process of debate, delay, and backroom negotiation to end this particular discrimination against women attorneys. With numerous supporters, the bill passed fairly easily in the House of Representatives. In the more conservative Senate, however, members told Lockwood they feared the legislation would be “an entering wedge for woman suffrage.”45

  Lockwood had a powerful supporter in Aaron A. Sargent, California’s senator and a women’s rights supporter. On the floor of the Senate he argued,

  [M]en have not the right, in contradiction to the intentions, the wishes, the ambition, of women, to say that their sphere shall be circumscribed. … It is mere oppression to say to the bread-seeking woman, you shall labor only in certain narrow ways for your living, we will hedge you out by law from profitable employments, and monopolize them for ourselves.46

  In 1879, attorney and former congressman Albert G. Riddle (1816-1902) motioned to admit Belva Lockwood to the U.S. Supreme Court bar. (Reprinted by permission of the Ohio Historical Society.)

  Staunch supporter Joseph McDonald of Indiana extended Sargent’s point by insisting that female attorneys, like their male counterparts, should have the opportunity to follow their cases through the appeals process, thus enabling “evenhanded justice” for the client and for the attorney.47

  Equally powerful senators, including George Edmunds and Roscoe Conkling, opposed her. In her newspaper column, Lura, often her mother’s naughty alter ego, described Conkling as “haughty” while dismissing Edmunds as “the fussiest old fossil in the Senate,” a man who believed that departure from the practices of yesterday was “diabolical wickedness.”48 Two adverse reports on the bill spoke to the likelihood of defeat, but on February 7, 1879, Senators McDonald, Sargent, and George Hoar pulled the bill from oblivion in open debate on the Senate floor. Belva had been notified to come quickly and was sitting in the visitors’ gallery when it passed on a voice vote of thirty-nine to twenty. On February 15 President Rutherford B. Hayes signed the bill into law.

  The victory was enormous. Lockwood and her stalwart male allies, emphasizing the reasonable nature of the legislation, had pushed a reluctant Congress to enact one of the very first federal measures in support of women’s rights. The statute reflected the beginnings of society’s recognition of women’s rights, however limited. Lockwood’s effort, encouraged by the women of the suffrage movement, occurred at a time when reformers in several states had succeeded in drawing attention to the unequal nature of married women’s right to control their wages and property. The state bar admission campaigns launched by Bradwell and Goodell in the Midwest, and by Clara Foltz and Laura Gordon in California, also signaled members of Congress that Lockwood was not alone in the belief that it was time to lift the legal disabilities that burdened women’s employment opportunities.

  After the Senate vote, Lockwood held court and sent flowers to the men who had made it possible.49 Bradwell, who, as Lockwood had written, “started the contest,” congratulated her friend in a lengthy editorial: “Ten years ago the passage of such a law would have been impossible. … Great credit is due Mrs. Lockwood.”50 And now that the deed was done, Bradwell felt free to link her support for equality of professional opportunity and woman suffrage: “If women are allowed to be physicians, clergymen, and last, but not least, lawyers … why should they not be allowed to vote?”51

  Lockwood waited to make her triumphal appearance at the Supreme Court. The justices were recessed and not scheduled to reconvene until March 3. On that day, at noon, she took a seat near the front of the courtroom in the place reserved for members of the bar and candidates for admission. She was dressed in a plain black velvet dress with satin vest and blue cloth coat, cut “a l’homme.” Lura, Lavinia Dundore, and friend Mary Walker accompanied her. Jeremiah Wilson and Samuel Shellabarger, prominent members of the District bar, sat at her side. An unusual number of journalists, including the well-known Emily Briggs, were present.

  Finally, signaled by the clerk, Lockwood rose and, accompanied by Riddle, moved to the inner rail immediately before Chief Justice Waite. When she stood, there was “a bating of breath and craning of necks.”52 Three years earlier, Riddle had presented her to the Court without success. Speaking in a clear voice, Riddle again said, “I move to admit to the bar of the court Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood, a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the District, in good standing and having an extensive practice in all branches.” He referred the Court to the law under which he made the application and offered “eulogistic” remarks about his “protege.”53 Chief Justice Waite asked with a smile if Riddle would vouch for her character and resp
ectability. Riddle assured the Court that he would. Waite directed Lockwood to step to the clerk’s desk to take the oath. She gave a graceful bow and stepped to the side, standing behind the other newly admitted male lawyers who were busy with the clerk. At her turn, she took the oath, kissed the Bible, and signed the name of the first woman to be admitted to practice law before the Supreme Court of the United States. Family and members of the government pressed around her, cheering loudly as the Court’s marshal called for order.54

  * * *

  Lockwood’s road trip in 1872 was the last of her extended absences from Washington until late in 1884 when she decided to run for the office of U.S. president and added paid lecturing to her resumé. The decade from late 1873 until 1884 presented her with rich professional opportunities, both in court and as a reform cause lobbyist. Several of her cases reveal particular aspects of the politics, changing law, and culture of the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

  The veterans’ claims clients who came to the office on F Street—the wounded and the widows—expressed the lasting, dreadful effects of the Civil War. There were hundreds of these clients, but the story of veteran James Kelly was particularly heartbreaking. Kelly came to Lockwood in 1877 near nervous collapse and, since the death of his wife, responsible for two young teenaged daughters. When he was committed to the Soldiers Home, Belva took in the girls and supported them with his pension. Eventually, she became their guardian.55

  Bar admission certificate given by the Supreme Court of the United States to Belva A. Lockwood, March 3, 1879. (Courtesy of the New York State Historical Association Library, Cooperstown.)

  Lockwood also represented several ladies in distress. Mary Jane Nichols became her client in 1875. Nichols had cared for the children of John Barber until, she alleged, he forcibly entered her room, raped her (several times), and made her pregnant. No criminal charges were brought although Mary Jane may well have told her story to the police. Despite this, Lockwood filed a civil lawsuit asking for ten thousand dollars in damages. The civil law of seduction was in flux. In the absence of a criminal trial, Lockwood invoked a recent decision “that under the common law a person whose rights have been violated, is not obligated to stand helplessly by and see his private rights merged in the crime against the public.”56 Historically, in Anglo-American law, the cause of action for seduction had been the privilege of fathers and masters. Only in the middle of the nineteenth century did some states extend this common-law right to women so that they might sue their abusers for damages. Only two years a member of the local bar, Lockwood showed that she was an aggressive and innovative lawyer ready to question received law in an effort to fashion an alternative legal remedy for her client. There is no record, but after eighteen months of pleas, demurrers, and oral argument, it appears that an out-of-court settlement was arranged.

  The case of Louisa Wallace, a former slave, provided a different set of circumstances. At the age of forty-seven Wallace was indicted for infanticide several days after the death of her newborn son. Lockwood handled Wallace’s defense with co-counsel James Redington. Like Lavinia Goodell, they may have been asked by the court to take the case, or they may have been brought in by the Freedmen’s Bureau, which provided legal aid to former slaves.

  The all-male jury deliberated less than two hours, rejecting the defense contention that the child had been stillborn. They found Wallace guilty but urged executive commutation of the stipulated sentence, death by hanging.57 Lockwood immediately filed motions both to have the verdict set aside and for a new trial, citing technical irregularities and lack of “sufficient and satisfying evidence.”58 A new trial was granted, with Lockwood and two male attorneys now defending Wallace. Lockwood called Susan A. Edson, a physician friend, as part of the defense strategy to challenge the prosecution’s assertion of death by willful and intentional neglect—to no avail. Again, an all-male jury found Wallace guilty, again recommending a ten-year sentence. Randall Hagner, the presiding judge, rejected the jurors’ recommendation of executive clemency and berated the women of the District for not attending the trial and acknowledging what he called the “rudest barbarism” of infanticide.59 Four days before her sentence of death was to be carried out, President Hayes granted Wallace a conditional pardon, reducing her sentence to ten years.

  Mary Jane Nichols claimed to have been raped but could not produce the needed witnesses. The paternity of Louisa Wallace’s child was never established. In the late nineteenth century the law posed difficult, often impossible, hurdles for women seeking justice who had been wronged in sexual relations with men. Women’s character bore close scrutiny: was she “loose,” designing, given to lying? Victimized women could choose to do nothing—to take their sullied names, lost dreams, and out-of-wedlock children, and go on with life. Or they could seek satisfaction, as Nichols had, through the use of civil law, public notice, and shaming. A civil action for seduction became popular among women after the Civil War. So did lawsuits for breach of promise of marriage. They were small but important legal weapons used to equalize the bargaining power of women, and Lockwood, enmeshed in women’s rights, undoubtedly saw them as an instrument to be used in unraveling patriarchy.60

  Lockwood handled several cases claiming breach of marriage promise. These cases posed evidentiary problems, but Lockwood continued to accept them, and soon after Mary Jane’s action she agreed to represent Lucy Walton Rhett Horton.

  Lucy was a belle from Alabama with a long name and a small purse. In January 1880 she asked Lockwood to bring a civil suit for twenty thousand dollars on her behalf against John H. Morgan, for seduction and breach of promise of marriage. Lucy claimed that John had seduced her one warm Selma evening. That was April 1877. Her beau was attractive, and the son of John T. Morgan, one of Alabama’s U.S. senators. Lucy attempted to hold her beau to his word while still living in Selma. She told Lockwood that “an indictment” had been brought in Alabama but that the judge was related to the senior Morgan’s wife, and had recused himself. No other judge stepped forward to hear the case. Lucy claimed no one wanted to anger the powerful Morgan family.

  John H. fled to the protection of his father in Washington. Lucy followed him on at least two occasions. She wanted John to marry her, though she no longer wished to live with him. If he refused, she wanted money and the opportunity to give the world “full notice” of the base nature of his character.61 Lucy first hired a series of male attorneys to attempt a negotiation on her behalf and, if that failed, a lawsuit. Dissatisfied with the preliminary results, she took after John H. with a pistol. Shots were fired but no one was hurt. Senator Morgan sent his son to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, for safety while Lucy was indicted on the charge of assault with intent to kill.62

  The criminal prosecution proceeded slowly. Meanwhile, Lockwood was hired, early in 1880, to continue the civil suit, which was now two years old. Lucy insisted that she should not have to live with the burden of a dishonored life, while Senator Morgan, himself accused of “ruining” several young women, was adamant that his son’s affair was nothing more than a youthful indiscretion and opposed both marriage and a settlement.63 The two sides kept the case before the court for two more years. Then, in November 1881, perhaps after private negotiations, Lockwood filed for dismissal.

  Jessie Raymond came to Lockwood, in 1879 or early 1880, for the purpose of bringing a lawsuit. She named Benjamin Harvey Hill, a married U.S. senator from Georgia, as the defendant. He was, according to his biographer, the outstanding southern figure in the Congress.64 According to Jessie Raymond, he was a sexual predator and the father of her child, Thomas Benjamin, born August 1, 1878. Jessie apparently attempted legal action in Georgia without success, a fact teased out in a press interview with Hill in which he acknowledged knowing Raymond, having “seen her once in a law office in Atlanta.”65

  Lockwood was well acquainted with Benjamin Hill. He had been dismissive of her efforts to open the federal bar to women attorneys and had voted against her bill, and she
relished the opportunity of bringing this powerful man to justice. She first pursued quiet negotiation. These private discussions were not fruitful, and on February 27, 1880, Lockwood filed a “Notice to Plead” in which her client swore that Hill had “debauched and carnally knew [her]; taking advantage of the fact that she was friendless and alone.”66 On March 2 Raymond petitioned the court to waive the docket fee because she was “poor, having no property or means wherewith to pay [the fee] in advance.”67

  Gossip-hungry Washington read eagerly as front-page news articles described the David versus Goliath battle. Lockwood set out to win ten thousand dollars in damages for seduction and child support, while Hill and his prominent attorney, R. Y. Merrick, sought to bribe Jessie to drop her lawsuit and to discredit Lockwood. It was Gilded Age drama at its best. In a public letter Lockwood challenged Hill to cease his denunciations of her “in the corridors and ante-rooms of the Senate,” while threatening to name the Capitol Hill family whose sixteen-year-old daughter Hill had debauched and to whose members Hill was now dispensing jobs.68 Jessie, according to reporters, made a daily practice of going to the Capitol or to the senator’s residence, where she “contents herself with attracting a crowd and talking loudly to them.”69 In the end, shaming Hill may have been all the payment that Lockwood received. Two separate press accounts, one in late March, another at the end of April, allude to a private settlement and the sight of Raymond, sporting a large roll of bills, boarding a train for Richmond.70 It was a messy lawsuit. Raymond was not an easy client, Hill was a powerful man, and there is no record that Lockwood earned a fee.