Another Judge stated that his opinion would have been in favour of the women’s claim, but for the 63rd Section of the Act of 1888. But the majority of those concerned, accepting the assertion “that a more learned Judge never lived than Justice Willes,” who had checked the Historical arguments in the case of Chorlton v. Lings, accepted also the decision in that case as the grounds of their Ruling. “I take it, that neither by the Common Law nor the Constitution of this country, from the beginning of the Common Law until now, can a woman be entitled to exercise any public function.”
One at least they forgot whom they might have remembered, it was the Woman from whom they held their Seals of office.
Thus Lady Sandhurst, after helping her colleagues, her country and her sex, for a year, with two other brave women were turned out, and the Council and the Country were alike the sufferers thereby. “Who will take care of the Baby Farms, the Pauper Lunatic women? the many small details that a man cannot know by accident, and prides himself in not knowing by experience?”
If they have been defeated on the County Councils, the success of women as Poor Law Guardians is undeniable. The spirit of tenderness for those who receive charity in their old age, the healing spirit of sympathy for those that have been tempted; the spirit of exact investigation of accounts, and of economy in expending the ratepayers’ money, has certainly been fostered by the presence of women on the Boards. The same may be said of women on the School Boards. They have offered themselves for many public appointments and offices. Sometimes they are accepted gladly; sometimes they are only not ejected because the law for doing so cannot be found.
A self-sacrificing worker in the cause of women has collected together and tabulated all the elections a woman may at present join, all the public offices she may at present fill. “The elections at which women may vote at present are: The House of Keyes, Isle of Man; Town Councils in England, Scotland, and Belfast; County Councils in England and Scotland, District Councils in Scotland, School Boards, Boards of Guardians, Local Boards of Health, Improvement Commissioners, Waywardens and Highway Boards, Road Surveyors, Burgh Commissioners in Scotland, Parochial Boards in Scotland, Select Vestries and District Boards in London, Burial Boards and Common Vestries.
They can be elected to School Boards, Boards of Guardians; also to Parochial Boards in Scotland and many other boards. They can be elected now to very many public offices, can be Members of Royal Commissions, Visitors of Lunatic Asylums, Inspectors of the Poor in Scotland, Inspectors of Nuisances, Registrars of Births, Deaths, and Marriages; Collectors of Poor Rates, Members of Dispensary Boards, Road Surveyors, Overseers of the Poor, Churchwardens, Sextons, Parish Clerks, Local Government Board Inspectors, County Council Inspectors of Baby Farms, Noxious Trades, etc.; Factory and Workshop Inspectors under the Home Office, Post-mistresses and Clerks in the Post Office, Census Clerks” (see “The Civil Rights of Women,” by Mrs. Eva Maclaren).
Some of these duties are, of course, performed without remuneration, but in others they are paid at a fair rate, in some cases, at the same rate as men.
I take in a separate paragraph some questions regarding work and its returns, but it seems necessary first to show the advance of education during the period. I have always felt that our sex owes much to our Queen simply for being what she is. At the time of the Reform Bill of 1832, she was being trained wisely for her future duties. The intellectual powers of a girl, when educated under favourable conditions, were brilliantly illustrated in her. The young Queen succeeded in 1837, and from the commencement of her reign there has been a constantly expanding view of the educatability even of ordinary girls. The want of good secondary schools was at first severely felt; but women began to patch up their education by private study or at public Lectures. The Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh, providing Lectures, Library, and Reading-Room, founded in 1846, was open from the first to women, as well as to men, and in many a large town were similar opportunities.
Mr. Thomas Oliphant of that city, in the same year, started a large School in Charlotte Square, to which he added two “Advanced Classes” for the elder girls. There were taught Literature and Science in new and suggestive methods, that many women, still living, have rejoiced in. The Normal Schools for training Teachers had always been open to women; but these “Advanced Classes” were intended for women of leisure, those who had been accustomed to leave a Ladies’ Finishing School, to become the Butterflies of Ball-Rooms, or better-class domestic drudges. A host of imitators showed the demand for schools of Mr. Oliphant’s style.
In London, the Public Day School Company, since 1871, has done splendid work, and trained thousands of girls; and higher schools and colleges all over the country, have given solid education to a class of young women, to whom, formerly, the most superficial smattering was considered sufficient.