Women Judges
In view of all their interest in juvenile courts, their labors to procure their establishment, and their protective care for the children passing through the courts, it was only natural that women should take the next step and mount the bench to deal, particularly, with cases involving children and girls. Fourteen years ago, Judge Lindsey, in Denver, called a woman to his assistance, in cases pending before him, and the experiment was eminently successful.
The St. Louis Juvenile Court has two women assistant judges to hear all cases of girls. The change took effect January 12, 1914, and was established by Judge Thomas C. Hennings, who appointed to these positions two women probation officers, Mrs. E. C. Runge and Catherine R. Dunn. No legislation was necessary to make the appointments. The girls are heard by these women privately and then their findings are submitted to him and entered as orders of the court. Only in cases of disagreement between the two women will the judge be called upon to hear the case.
St. Louis was the third city to take this step. Chicago and Denver had already appointed women assistant judges, but the “move” in St. Louis came quite independently as the direct result of a baffling case which Judge Hennings had to meet. Four girls were brought before him, from whom he was unable to get truthful statements even after searching inquiry. He put two women probation officers at work on the problem, and they got the facts truthfully from the girls at once. When Mrs. Runge asked one of the girls, “Why didn’t you tell this to the judge?” she said, “Why, I couldn’t tell such things to any man.” When Judge Hennings heard this, he was moved at once to the decision not to hear any more girls’ cases himself.
Mrs. Runge has been a probation officer in the Juvenile Court six years and Miss Dunn four. Both of them had previously had long experience in social work. It is hoped in St. Louis that these appointments will lead to the appointment of a woman assistant judge to give her whole time to it. At present these women are still probation officers.[[48]]
In 1913, a court for delinquent girls up to the age of twenty-one was created for Chicago, and Miss Mary Bartelme was appointed judge. As public guardian of Cook County, Miss Bartelme had had excellent experience with young people and children in preparation for her work on the bench. “Miss Bartelme,” said Judge Pinckney recently, “is admirably fitted for her position. She is an acute and well-trained lawyer, with a distinctly judicial temperament. Her mind is quick and comprehensive. She has poise, cool judgment, and a fine, discriminating sense of justice.”
Judge Bartelme does not believe that the court can solve the question of delinquency among children. She holds positive opinions on causes, and would seek preventive measures, like all progressive men and women today. The causes of delinquency, in girls, according to her ideas, are: “Growing luxury of the age, man’s loss of chivalry toward girls who work, immodest fashions in dress set by women of wealth, bad home environment, inadequate wages, dance halls with bar attachments, saloons with family entrances, immoral moving-picture shows, improper police supervision of skating rinks, ice cream parlors, amusement parks, and other places of amusement, activity of ‘white slave’ agents of commercialized vice, laws which permit girls to go to work at an immature age.”
As an auxiliary to the Municipal Court of Chicago, a psychopathic laboratory is to be established very soon, on the theory that offenders may have diseased brains and need mental treatment rather than punishment. Miss Mary R. Campbell, of Milwaukee, who did research work at Johns Hopkins and Harvard, will be associate director. The laboratory will be used for all offenders who seem to need study.
In some of the domestic relations courts now in the larger cities, women are serving as assistant judges.