followed the good example, and in 1874, Boston, for the first time, chose six women to serve in this capacity.[1] There had hitherto been no open objection to this innovation, but the school committee of Boston not liking the idea of women co-workers, declared them ineligible to hold such office. Miss Peabody applied to the Supreme Court for its opinion upon the matter, but the judges refused to answer, and dismissed the petition on the ground that the school committee itself had power to decide the question of the qualifications of members of the board. The subject was brought before the legislature of the same year, and that body, almost unanimously, passed "An Act to Declare Women Eligible to Serve as Members of School Committees." Thus the women members were reinstated.[2]
This refusal on the part of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts to answer a question relating to woman's rights under the law, was received with a knowing smile by those who remembered the three adverse decisions relating to women which had been given by that august body. The first of these was on the case of Sarah E. Wall of Worcester. The second was concerning a clause in the will of Francis Jackson of Boston, who left $5,000 and other property to the woman's rights cause. Its third adverse decision was given in 1871. In that year, Julia Ward Howe and Mary E. Stevens were appointed by Governor Claflin as justices of the peace. Some member of the governor's council having doubted whether women could legally hold the office, the opinion of the Supreme Court was asked and it decided substantially that because women were women, or because women were not men, they could not be justices of the peace; and the appointment was not confirmed.
Changes in the common law began in 1843 with reference to the wife's right to hold her own property. In 1846 she could legally sign a receipt for money earned or deposited by herself.[3] Before 1855 a woman could not hold her own property, either earned or acquired by inheritance. If unmarried, she was ob-
- ↑ Lucretia P. Hale, Abby W. May, Lucia M. Peabody, Mary J. S. Blake, Kate G. Wells, Lucretia Crocker.
- ↑ This act, so brief and so expressive, is worthy to be remembered. It simply reads: "Be it enacted, etc., as follows: Sec. 1. No person shall be deemed ineligible to serve upon a school committee by reason of sex. Sec. 2. This act shall take effect upon its passage. (Approved June 30, 1874.) By force of habit, the legislature said not a word in the law about women. There are now (1885) 102 women members of school-boards in Massachusetts.
- ↑ See "Women under the law of Massachusetts," Henry H. Sprague. Boston: W. B. Clarke & Carruth.
