Rebels at the Bar

by Jill Norgren

  70. Robinson to Equity Club members, 9 April 1887, WL, 65.

  71. Lelia Josephine Robinson, Law Made Easy: A Book for the People (Chicago: Sanitary Publishing Company, 1886), i. Reprinted in Kessinger Publishing’s Legacy Series, and also available on Google Books.

  72. Ibid., iii.

  73. Ibid., v.

  74. Ibid., vi.

  75. Ibid., v-vi.

  76. Robinson to Equity Club members, 7 April 1888, WL, 122.

  77. Ibid., 122.

  78. Ibid., 123.

  79. Ibid., 124, 119.

  80. Lelia Josephine Robinson, The Law of Husband and Wife, Comp. for Popular Use (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1889). Reprinted by MLibrary (2011).

  81. Robinson, for example, references Greene and her work at the beginning of her article, “Women Lawyers in the United States,” The Green Bag, January 1890, 10.

  82. Johnson, “‘A Pioneer Woman’: The Scholar and Lawyer, Mary Anne Greene,” WLH website, section 1, 1, citing to Mary Anne Greene, L.L.B: A Pioneer Woman, 5, Duke University Library Biographical Collection.

  83. Mary A. Greene to Equity Club members, 27 April 1887, WL, 52. The following quotations in this paragraph also cite to this letter, 52-53.

  84. Mary A. Greene to Equity Club members, 5 April 1888, WL, 97.

  85. Ibid., 98. Hemenway had been nominated by President William McKinley for a position on the U.S. Supreme Court, but after the president’s assassination, Theodore Roosevelt nominated Oliver Wendell Holmes.

  86. Mary A. Greene to Equity Club members, 22 May 1889, WL, 163.

  87. Ibid., 165.

  88. Gillett to Equity Club members, 27 April 1889, WL, 161.

  89. Virginia G. Drachman, Sisters in Law: Women Lawyers in Modern American History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 82. Robinson’s name appears on the list of attorneys aiding the Union’s Protective Committee.

  90. American Law Review 24 (1890): 779; Lelia J. Robinson, “Women Lawyers in the United States,” 30. For a list of Greene’s articles before 1893, see “Mary A. Green,” in Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, eds., A Woman of the Century (1893; reprint New York: Gordon Press, 1975).

  91. Mary A. Greene, The Woman’s Manual of Law (New York: Silver, Burdett, 1902). Reprint edition, Gale Publishing, MOML (Making of Modern Law Legal Treatises, 1800-1926), 2010.

  92. Robinson, “Women Lawyers,” 30.

  93. Robinson to Equity Club members, 7 April 1888, WL, 118. The remaining quotations in this paragraph also cite to this letter, 118-19.

  94. Mary A. Greene to Equity Club members, 14 May 1890, WL, 186. Robinson was also involved in starting the Pentagon Club, an organization for women lawyers as well as professional women in medicine, teaching, theology, and journalism.

  95. Lelia J. Robinson to Equity Club members, 22 May 1889, WL, 170-71.

  96. “Alice Parker,” in Willard and Livermore, A Woman of the Century, 557.

  97. Lelia J. Robinson, “Boston’s Women Lawyers,” The Business Woman’s Journal 81 (1889).

  98. Belva A. Lockwood, “Women of the American Bar,” The Illustrated American, July 26, 1890, 45-47. Lockwood includes a page on the women admitted by this date to the U.S. Supreme Court.

  99. Robinson to Equity Club members, 22 May 1889, WL, 171.

  100. Lelia Robinson Sawtelle to Equity Club members, 18 September 1890, WL, 200.

  101. Mary A. Greene to Equity Club members, 14 May 1890, WL, 186-87.

  102. Item, “The Second Nationalist Club of Boston, Officers for 1889-90,” LRS.

  103. Petition of Ricker, 66 N.H. 207 (1890).

  104. Greene, “Mrs. Lelia Robinson Sawtelle,” 51. Many notices were published immediately after her death. See, for example, “Obituary Notes: Mrs. Lelia Robinson Sawtelle,” New York Times, August 11, 1891, 4. This obituary included the label directions for the use of the belladonna, “Ten drops; may increase to sixteen,” suggesting that the family wished the public to know it was an accidental death.

  105. Greene, “Lelia Robinson Sawtelle,” 51. Quotations in the rest of this paragraph cite to this article and page.

  106. Johnson, “A Pioneer Woman,” section 7, 3. Greene offered a class at the society about the legal status of women in countries where missions had been established.

  107. “Women in the Law Reform Congress,” CLN 25 (1893): 435. On August 3 and August 4, Greene, then Foltz, spoke at a meeting of women lawyers organized to coincide with the fair. Jill Norgren, Belva Lockwood (New York: New York University Press), 194-98.

  108. Greene, A Pioneer Woman. In this autobiographical recollection Greene does mention regret at not seeking admission to the Rhode Island bar. She considered Rhode Island a very conservative state and, perhaps, feared that she would be turned down as the first woman applicant.

  109. Greene to Equity Club members, 22 May 1889, WL, 164.

  110. Johnson, “A Pioneer Woman,” section 4, 18. My discussion of Greene’s presentation draws upon Johnson’s excellent analysis, section 4, 9-20. The published talk may be found at Greene, “Married Women’s Property Acts in the United States, and Needed Reforms Therein,” Albany Law Journal 48 (1893): 206.

  111. Johnson, “A Pioneer Woman,” section 4, 16-17.

  112. Greene, The Woman’s Manual, iii.

  113. Ibid., iv.

  114. Ibid., v.

  115. Ibid., v.

  116. Greene, A Pioneer Woman, 5-6; www.herhatwasinthering.org.

  CHAPTER 9

  1. Julia Hull Winner, Belva A. Lockwood, Number 19 of the Occasional Contributions of the Niagara County Historical Society (Niagara Falls, NY: Fose Printing, 1969), 94.

  2. Laura de F. Gordon to Equity Club members, 26 April 1887, WL, 50.

  3. Belva A. Lockwood to Equity Club members, 30 April 1887, WL, 57.

  4. Ibid., 58.

  5. Ibid., 59.

  6. Ibid., 59.

  7. Greene to Equity Club members, 22 May 1889, WL, 164.

  8. “Should a Woman Lawyer Wear Her Hat in Court?” Reprinted in the Washington Law Reporter, April 1, 1876, 47.

  9. Ibid., 47; “Mrs. Lockwood’s Hat,” reprinted in the Washington Law Reporter, April 15, 1876, 71.

  10. “Mrs. Lockwood’s Hat,” 71.

  11. Robinson to Equity Club members, 7 April 1888, WL, 127.

  12. Ibid., 127.

  13. Ibid., 127.

  14. Margaret L. Wilcox to Equity Club members, 1 June 1889, WL, 177-78.

  15. Emma Haddock to Equity Club members, 12 May 1888, WL, 101.

  16. Lettie L. Burlingame to Equity Club members, 22 April 1889, WL, 156.

  17. Ibid., 156.

  18. Ibid., 156.

  19. Gillett to Equity Club members, 27 April 1889, WL, 159.

  20. Catharine G. Waugh to Equity Club members, 26 April 1889, WL, 175.

  21. Ada H. Kepley to Equity Club members, 3 July 1888, WL, 108.

  22. Margaret L. Wilcox to Equity Club members, 20 April 1888, WL, 140.

  23. Ibid., 141.

  24. Lettie L. Burlingame to Equity Club members, 22 April 1889, WL, 156.

  25. Florence Cronise to Equity Club members, 23 May 1888, WL, 95.

  26. Florence Cronise to Equity Club members, late summer 1889, WL, 158.

  27. Emma M. Gillett to Equity Club members, 18 April 1888, WL, 96-97.

  28. “Mrs. Ada M. Bittenbender,” in Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, eds., A Woman of the Century (1893; reprint New York: Gordon Press, 1975), 87. The Bittenbenders’ partner in this venture was Clarence Buell.

  29. Ada M. Bittenbender to Equity Club members, 10 May 1889, WL, 154.

  30. Rebecca Edwards, “Mary Lease and the Sources of Populist Protest,” in Ballard C. Campbell, ed., The Human Tradition in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2000), 60. This sketch of Lease draws upon Edwards’s research.

  31. Joan Jensen, ed. With These Hands (Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1981), 158-59.

  32. J. Ellen Foster, “Women
in Politics,” in Mary Kavanaugh Oldham, ed., The Congress of Women: Held in the Woman’s Building, World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 (Chicago: Monarch Book Company, 1894), 668-69. Available at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/eagle/congress/foster.html.

  33. At this time, a number of states had dram shop acts under which a person could sue bar owners and liquor dealers to recover damages caused by an intoxicated buyer. Richard H. Chused, “Courts and Temperance ‘Ladies,’” in Tracy A. Thomas and Tracey Jean Boisseau, eds., Feminist Legal History (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 36 ff., and notes 16 and 22.

  34. Elmer C. Adams and Warren D. Foster, Heroines of Modern Progress (New York: Sturgis & Walton, 1913; available on Google Books), 265-69. See also, Rebecca Edwards, Angels in the Machinery (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) for discussion of Foster and Lease.

  35. Francis Curtis, The Republican Party (New York: Putnam, 1904), 2: 251-53.

  36. Adams and Foster, Heroines, 270.

  37. My discussion of Stoneman draws on the research of Christine Sebourn in her Stanford Law School Women’s Legal History Biography Seminar paper, WLH.

  38. In the Matter of the Application of Kate Stoneman, 40 Hun. 538 (N.Y. 1886); In re Leonard, 53 Am. Rep. 323, 325 (Or. 1885); “A Lady Candidate for the Bar,” New York Times, May 8, 1886, 1; “The First Female Lawyer,” Albany Times, May 20, 1886, 4; Judith S. Kaye, “How to Accomplish Success: The Example of Kate Stoneman,” Albany Law Review 57 (1994): 961. Stoneman was aware that Belva Lockwood had applied, unsuccessfully, for bar admission in 1880, in Poughkeepsie, New York.

  39. Mabel Jacques Eichel, “Miss Kate Stoneman, Lawyer, One of Our Pioneer Suffragists,” The Women Lawyers’ Journal 7 (1918): 35. In 1886 Stoneman was also appointed a notary public.

  40. Lura McNall Ormes, “Our Washington Letter,” LDJ, November 21, 1873, 2.

  41. Ibid., 2.

  42. For a discussion of the Women’s Law Class and New York University’s role in opening its law school to women, see Barbara Babcock, Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 184-88.

  43. Grace Hathaway, Fate Rides a Tortoise: A Biography of Ellen Spencer Mussey (Chicago: John C. Winston, 1937), 107-8.

  44. Emma M. Gillett to Equity Club members, 18 April 1888, WL, 96-97.

  45. For a fictional account of this life, see Winston Churchill, Mr. Crewe’s Career (New York: Macmillan, 1908).

  46. This sketch of Senter’s life draws on Karen S. Beck, A Working Lawyer’s Life: The Life Book of John Henry Senter, 1879-1884 (Clark, NJ: Lawbook Exchange, 2008).

  47. Chused, “Courts and Temperance ‘Ladies,’” 37.

  48. Ibid., 38-39.

  49. Ibid., 38.

  50. Felice Batlan, “Legal Aid, Women Lay Lawyers, and the Rewriting of History, 1863-1930,” in Tracy A. Thomas and Tracey Jean Boisseau, eds., Feminist Legal History (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 173. My discussion of these aid societies draws on Batlan’s research. See also Felice Batlan, “The Ladies’ Health Protective Association: Lay Lawyers and Urban Cause Lawyering,” Akron Law Review 41 (2008): 701. New York produced another female-led legal aid organization in this period, the Arbitration Society. Short-lived, it was founded by Fanny B. Weber and Swiss lawyer Dr. Emily Kempin.

  51. Batlan, “Legal Aid,” 175-76.

  52. Gwen Hoerr Jordan, “Them Law Wimmin: The Protective Agency for Women and Children and the Gendered Origins of Legal Aid,” in Thomas and Boisseau, eds., Feminist Legal History. My discussion of PAWC draws on Jordan’s research.

  53. Ibid., 168.

  54. Ibid., 168.

  55. “Woman Gets Thieves after Police Give Up,” New York Times, October 3, 1905, n.p.

  56. “New Field of Legal Work among the Poor: A Woman Lawyer Who Stands between the Ignorant and Oppressed and Those Who Take Advantage,” New York Times, June 11, 1905, n.p.

  57. Babcock, Woman Lawyer, 188, citing to Rosalie Loew, “Women Lawyers of the New York Bar,” Metropolitan Magazine, June 1896, 279-84.

  58. Babcock, Woman Lawyer, 188. In 1903 Loew married Travis Whitney and converted to Protestantism. For a short time, they practiced law together. Dorothy Thomas, “Rosalie Loew Whitney,” Jewish Women’s Archive, http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/whitney-rosalie-loew.

  59. Felice Batlan, “Notes from the Margins: Florence Kelley and the Making of Sociological Jurisprudence,” in Daniel W. Hamilton, ed., Transformations in American Legal History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Law School, 2011), 2: 242. This sketch of Kelley draws upon Batlan’s research. See also Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women’s Political Culture, 1830-1900 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995).

  60. Batlan, “Notes,” 247.

  EPILOGUE

  1. “Woman Suggested for the Vacancy on Supreme Bench.” Unidentified newspaper, January 1912, author’s files.

  2. “Hobbs,” at www.herhatwasinthering.org. If Hobbs did not serve, Catharine Waugh McCulloch would have been the first woman justice of the peace in Illinois.

  3. Mary L. Clark, “Women as Supreme Court Advocates, 1879-1979,”Journal of Supreme Court History 30 (2005): 47, 52.

  4. Martha H. Swain, “Lucy Someville Howorth: Lawyer, Politician, and Feminist,” Mississippi History Now, available at http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/articles/306/lucy-somerville-howorth-lawyer-politician-and-feminist.

  5. Christine L. Wade, “Burnita Shelton Matthews: The Biography of a Pioneering Woman, Lawyer and Feminist,” WLH.

  6. Selma Moidel Smith, “A Century of Achievement: The Centennial of the National Association of Women Lawyers,” WLH.

  7. Wade, “Burnita Shelton Matthews,” 12.

  8. Nancy Gertner, In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011), chapter 2.

  9. Stephanie Francis Ward, “Female Judicial Candidates Are Held to Different Standards, Sotomayor Tells Students,” ABA Journal: Law News Now, posted March 8, 2011, at http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/female_judicial_candidates_are_held_to_different_standards_sotomayor_tells.

  10. Ibid.

  11. “Women in Law in the U.S.,” at http://www.catalyst.org/publication/246/women-in-law-in-the-us.

  12. “Gender of All Federal Judges 1998-2009,” at http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/08/01/284502/male-federal-judges-outnumber-women-three-to-one.

  13. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Laura W. Brill, “Women in the Federal Judiciary: Three Way Pavers and the Exhilarating Change President Carter Wrought,” Fordham Law Review 64 (November 1995): 281, 289.

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