Participation in the Other Auxiliary Congresses
From Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz -- Online Notes For The Book
At first women were omitted altogether from the planning of the Congresses (other than the special one devoted exclusively to them in May). Even their usual allies, liberal men, were queasy about admitting women to the Congresses as planners or speakers, though there was no problem raised about their attendance. Of course, they said, women deserved “a share in the intellectual life of mankind,” and have progressed “against almost hopeless odds.” Yet, as a writer warned from the pages of THE DIAL, if given an equal voice in the Congresses, women would almost certainly “allow zeal to outrun discretion,” and “in order to swell their numbers” would include speakers who have “a merely dilettante interest in a subject.” The World’s Congress Auxiliary, 156 THE DIAL: A SEMI-MONTHLY JOURNAL OF LITERARY CRITICISM, DISCUSSION, AND INFORMATION 377 (1892).
Under Bertha Palmer’s leadership, a Woman’s Branch of the World’s Congress Auxiliary was established and carried out a Congress-by-Congress struggle over the particulars of participation, which were microcosms of the larger battle over women’s entry into public life. In the end, women spoke at fourteen of the seventeen total Congresses (the exceptions were real estate, engineering, and electricity). Ellen M Henrotin, The Great Congresses of the World's Fair, COSMOPOLITAN MAG., Mar. 1893, at 626. Ellen M. Henrotin, The Coming Congresses at Chicago, 23 WOMAN’S J., 406 (1892). Henrotin was one of Bertha Palmer’s main lieutenants, and, as vice-president of the Women's Branch of the World's Congress Auxiliary, proved to be a strong leader herself.
No Congress was more contested than Jurisprudence and Law Reform, where Foltz gave her Public Defender speech. Myra Bradwell, her lawyer-daughter Bessie Helmer, and two other Chicago lawyers, Mary Ahrens and Catherine Waugh McCullough, were on the women’s auxiliary for this Congress. See Helmer, Ahrens and McCullough, Sketches in BAR NONE: 125 YEARS OF WOMEN LAWYERS IN ILLINOIS (Gwen Hoerr McNamee ed., 1998). See also MARY JANE MOSSMAN, THE FIRST WOMEN LAWYERS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF GENDER, LAW AND THE LEGAL PROFESSIONS 64-67 (2006) [hereafter MOSSMAN, THE FIRST WOMEN LAWYERS].
Bradwell wrote that the men fought the women’s participation so hard that they thought of holding their own law reform Congress, where they “could send an early invitation, giving ample time for the preparation of papers to women lawyers.” But “after mature deliberation” they concluded that “interests of women in the profession of law would be best conserved by a joint congress,” though the invitations to four women to speak did not issue until “the eleventh hour.” Women in the Law Reform Congress, 25 CHI. LEGAL NEWS 435 (1893) reprinted in 48 ALB. L. REV. 147 (1893). 95 LAW TIMES 402 (Britain, 1893) reported that Bradwell and her daughter battled for participation in the Congress, though many of the men on the committee preferred that the women hold their own meeting. See also Public Defenders, 28 CHI. LEGAL NEWS, Aug. 22, 1896 (describing Foltz’s New York City Bar admission) which recalled that Myra Bradwell had “invited” Foltz to speak at the Law Reform Congress, where she had presented the public defender idea.
Myra Bradwell died in 1894 soon after the close of the Fair. In a memorial address, Charles Bonney, President of the World’s Congress Auxiliary (Chapter Six), spoke of Bessie Bradwell Helmer, Bradwell’s daughter who was Vice-chairman of the Woman’s Committee on Jurisprudence and Law Reform, and who “on account of her mother’s illness during that year, had the actual charge of the work of the committee and discharged the duties of her position as Acting chairman with marked ability and success.” 27 CHI. LEGAL NEWS 183 (1894).
Foltz did not publicly credit her invitation to women’s efforts but spoke instead of representing the California Bar at the Congress of Jurisprudence and Law Reform. See e.g. Jennie Van Allen, The Fight for a Public Defender: A Sketch of Clara Shortridge Foltz, 13 W. COAST MAG. 43 (1912) (represented Bar). I think Foltz probably arranged to represent the Bar after the last minute invitation engineered by the women’s auxiliary committee–perhaps as a way to get her way paid for her second trip to the Fair in the summer of 1893. Also she may have thought it would increase her credibility to speak with the Bar credential rather than the women’s rights invitation. Judge W.W. Morrow, a family friend, former Republican Congressman and currently on the Federal Circuit court, was also the head of the Bar in 1893 and could have made the designation. On Morrow, see SHUCK, BENCH AND BAR (Morrow entry).
The two foreign women lawyers invited to speak, Eliza Orme of England, and Cornelia Sorabji of India, could not come because of the last minute invitation. Orme’s paper, The Legal Status of Women in England, was read in her absence by Mary Ahrens; Sorabji’s paper, Legal Status of Women in India was presented by Bessie Bradwell Helmer. Both were reprinted in the 25 CHI. LEGAL NEWS 321, 431 (August 12, 1893). MOSSMAN, THE FIRST WOMEN LAWYERS, has compelling biographical studies of Orme and Sorabji who are central to her comparative view of nineteenth century women attorneys. One of Mossman’s clearest findings, arrived at after impressive and meticulous research, is that as difficult as the pioneer women lawyers in America found it to make their way, the situation was much better than in any other country.
Eliza Orme was the first woman to earn the prestigious LLB degree in England (in 1888 from London University), but she was never “called” to the Bar, or allowed to appear in the courts. She told a woman attorney who visited her in 1888 that she planned to wait until five or six other women were ready to apply and then to seek admission in a group. VIRGINIA G. DRACHMAN, WOMEN LAWYERS AND THE ORIGINS OF PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY IN AMERICA: LETTERS OF THE EQUITY CLUB 1887 TO 1890, at 144 (1993) (1888 letter of Jessie E. Wright of Massachusetts). But this apparently never happened, and women were not admitted to the legal profession formally in England until 1922. Mossman, supra, at 121, citing C. BOLT, THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES AND BRITAIN FROM THE 1790S TO THE 1920S, at 179 (1993). With another woman who studied law, Orme carried on a successful patent and conveyancing practice in Chancery Lane, before and after receiving her law degree. She was politically active as a suffragist and women’s rights proponent and had many American contacts in the movement. Susan Anthony visited her office, for instance, in 1883. Id; see also, Drachman, supra, at 279, 280 (biographical sketch of Orme).
Sorabji was the first woman to study law at Oxford, and in 1892, the first to sit for the Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) examinations there “even though women were not then entitled to Oxford degrees nor eligible for admission to the bar.” In India, Sorabji was the first woman student at Deccan College, and also the first to graduate with an LLB degree from Bombay University in 1897. She was the first to appear in a British court, albeit a colonial one in Poona, representing a poor man accused of murder. Mossman, at 191. Sorabji had a long career helping women in Purdah and serving on administrative boards in India, Mossman, at 191-237, but was never a fully accepted member of the legal profession there or in Britain.
Clara Foltz and Mary Greene were both planning on attending the Women Lawyers’ meeting at the Queen Isabella Association a few days earlier than the Congress meeting, and so were available to speak in person. Bradwell did not say why Foltz and Greene were chosen from among the dozen or so well-known American women lawyers. They were representative in a sense: from opposite coasts, one an office attorney, specializing in property matters, and the other that rarest of women – a courtroom lawyer. The two would become, in Bradwell’s formulation, the first women “in the history of the world” to speak for themselves “at an international congress of lawyers.” Women in the Law Reform Congress, 25 CHI. LEGAL NEWS 435 (1893). Mary A. Greene spoke on Married Women’s Property Acts in the United States and Needed Reforms, reprinted in 25 CHI. LEGAL NEWS, 433 (1893?). Clara Foltz’s speech is reprinted in the same volume. 25 CHI. LEGAL NEWS 431 (1893); 48 ALBANY L. J. 248 (1893).
Greene later wrote in her brief autobiography that attendance at the Fair was “the most important event in her whole career…she addressed the World’s Congress of Jurisprudence and law Reform on the same platform with leading jurists of the world, such as Sir Richard Webster of England, Hon. David Dudley Field of the United States and jurists from Scotland, Austria, Italy, Russia, Spain and elsewhere.” MARY ANNE GREENE, LL.B: A PIONEER WOMAN, 5 (Duke University Library Biographical Collection) (Greene wrote her autobiography in the third person).
Louis Frank, a European advocate of women’s rights, especially to-be lawyers, wrote about the women lawyer’s participation in the Congress that “women lawyers had thus achieved recognition from the most eminent jurists in the world.” See On-Line Bibliographic Note: Women Lawyers History and Individual Biographies, at WLH Website; MOSSMAN, THE FIRST WOMAN LAWYERS, at 65. In a letter to Frank, Mary Greene gave Myra Bradwell and her daughter the credit for women’s invitation to speak. Id. at 64.
Greene’s speech at the Congress explained in very clear, but certainly not passionate or rousing terms, the progress women had made in their legal rights to own and manage property. She outlined the further reforms needed, and seemed to accept the proposition that progress would proceed through a combination of common-law development with many legislative fixes along the road to fairness. See Kathryn Johnson, “A Pioneer Woman”: The Scholar and Lawyer (2006), available at WLH website for a thorough analysis of this speech and her scholarly writing in general. Greene’s presentation was a contrast in almost every way with |Clara Foltz’s on public defenders. Neither one said anything about the other on the public record, though they also appeared on the same program at the Queen Isabella Association meeting, where Greene spoke on Women Lawyers in Ancient Times and Foltz gave the original and intellectual speech on Evolution of Law analyzed in Chapter Five.
For more on Mary Greene, see On-Line Note: Women Lawyers History and Individual Biographies.
Though she was not an official invitee, Belva Lockwood offered some words on An International Arbitration Court and a Congress of Nations, 25 CHI. LEGAL NEWS 447 (1893). (This was apparently the same speech as she gave at the Isabella Association meeting, see Norgren, at 197. Lockwood attended the Congress and wrote an article describing it, The Congress of Law Reform, 3 AM. J. POLITICS 321 (1893), cited in Chapter Seven. Her article is idiosyncratic, little more than a transcription of her notes without analysis. It also scants the importance of Foltz’s presentation, which may reflect some rivalry with Foltz, or perhaps resentment that she was not among those asked to be on the official program. Lockwood seems to have been a last-minute addition to the proceedings, with one paper noting that she wore “a big…press badge” and “monopolized attention as ‘the lady dressed in brown who ran for the Presidency of the United States eight years ago.’” DAILY INTER OCEAN, Aug. 8, 1893 at 7.
The law reform section was one part of a larger Government Congress, with simultaneous sessions on municipal reform and on suffrage. Suffrage proved to be the popular favorite, packing in huge crowds every day: “One thousand women and a red-headed man,” attended the first session on woman suffrage, according to The Chicago Tribune. On the suffrage platform were such notables as Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglas, Clarence Darrow, and many old workers like Laura Gordon, and the young women who would lead the next generation. Swelling the audience were hundreds of women who had never been to a suffrage meeting back home. For the first time in a long while, the vote for women seemed very near. Looking out over the multitudes, Anthony spoke of “wandering in the wilderness of disenfranchisement for forty-five years, five years longer than the children of Israel.” But now, at last, she prophesied, the promised land was in sight. Susan B. Anthony Speaks on the Suffrage Question; Sees The Promised Land, DAILY INTER-OCEAN, Aug. 9, 1893, at 8 (the same story covers Clara Foltz’s talk at the Congress of Jurisprudence and Law Reform); Law Reform Congress, CHI. TRIB., Aug. 9, 1893.
By contrast to the suffrage sessions, only a few hundred people, almost all men, attended the law reform congress. In the parlance of the day, it was a “select” audience — meaning small but impressive. The aristocracy of the American Bar was there as well as dignitaries from other countries: professors, judges, legislators, code-makers and text writers. They met from August 7-10, in two sessions a day, one at 10 AM, lasting into the afternoon, and the next at 8 PM often extending past midnight.
