There have been women on the Civil Service Examining Board for nurses, matrons, etc., but there are none at present.
To Pennsylvania belongs the honor of appointing the first woman in a hospital for the insane with exclusive charge — Dr. Alice Bennett, Norristown Asylum, in 1880. Now all of the six State hospitals for the insane employ women physicians. In Philadelphia there are five hospitals under the exclusive control of women.
Women have entire charge of the female prisoners in the Philadelphia County jail. Police matrons are on duty at many of the station houses in cities of the first and second class, sixteen in Philadelphia.
Committees of women, officially appointed, visit all the public institutions of Philadelphia and Montgomery counties.
Dr. Frances C. Van Gasken served several years as health inspector, the only woman to fill such an office in Philadelphia.
Six women are employed as State factory inspectors and receive the same salary as the men inspectors.
Within the past ten years a large number of women have become city librarians through appointment by the Common Councils.
Mrs. Margaret Center Klingelsmith, LL. B., is librarian of the State University Law School, but has been refused admission to the Academy of Law (Bar Association) of Philadelphia, although there is a strong sentiment in her favor led by George E Nitzsche, registrar of the Law School.
Occupations: The only prohibited industry is mining. No professions are legally forbidden to women.
In 1884 a graduate of the Law Department of the University of Pennsylvania, Mrs. Carrie Burnham Kilgore, made the fight; for the admission of women to the bar and was herself finally admitted to practice in the courts of Philadelphia. Judges William S. Pierce, William N. Ashman and Thomas K. Finletter advocated this advanced step.
There are 150 women physicians in Philadelphia alone.
Education: The Woman's Medical College of Philadelphia, Clara Marshall, M. D., dean, was incorporated in 1850.[1] The idea of its establishment originated with Dr. Bartholomew Fussell, a
- ↑ See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. I, p. 389.
