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.
[140] See "Women under the law of Massachusetts," Henry H. Sprague. Boston: W. B. Clarke & Carruth.
[141] The authority for this old "thumb" tradition, that "a man had the right to whip his wife with a stick no bigger than his thumb," is found in an early edition of Phillip's Evidence. That book was authority in English common law and in it Phillips is quoted as saying, that according to the law of his day a husband "might lawfully chastise his wife with a reasonable weapon, as a broomstick," adding, however, "but if he use an unreasonable weapon, such as an iron bar, and death ensue, it would be murder."—[Chamberlin, p. 818.
[142] In an old will, made a hundred and fifty years ago, a husband of large means bequeathed to his "dearly beloved wife" $50 and a new suit of clothes, with the injunction that she should return to her original, or family home. And with this small sum, as her share of his property, he returned her to her parents.
[143] The little actual gain in votes since 1874, in favor of municipal or general suffrage for women, might cause the careless observer to draw the inference that no great progress had been made in legislative sentiment during all these years. In 1870 the vote in the House of Representatives on the General Woman Suffrage Bill was 133 to 68. In 1885 the bill giving municipal suffrage was defeated in the House by a vote of 130 to 61. But this is not a true index of the progress of public opinion.
[144] Mrs. Ellen M. Richards was the first woman who entered.
[145] The Harvard Annex, so called, began its seventh year with sixty-five young ladies enrolled for study. The enrollment for the preceding six years was as follows: First year, 29: second, 47; third 40; fourth, 39; fifth, 49, sixth, 55. Some of the students come from distant places, but a majority are from the Cambridge and neighboring high-schools. The institution occupies this year for the first time a building which has been conveniently arranged for its purposes. The endowment of the association which manages the work now amounts to $85,000.
[146] This lady was Lucy Downing, a sister of the first governor of Massachusetts. She was the wife of Emanuel Downing, a lawyer of the Inner Temple, a friend of Governor Winthrop and afterward a man of mark in the infant colony. In a letter to her brother, Lucy Downing expresses the desire of herself and husband to come to New England with their children, but laments that if they do come her son George cannot complete his studies. She says: "You have yet noe societies nor means of that kind for the education of youths in learning. It would make me goe far nimbler to New England, if God should call me to it, than otherwise I should, and I believe a colledge would put noe small life into the plantation." This letter was written early in 1636, and in October of the same year the General Court of the Massachusetts colony agreed to give £400 towards establishing a school or college in Newtowne (two years later called Cambridge). Soon afterwards Rev. John Harvard died and left one-half of his estate to this "infant seminary," and in 1638 it was ordered by the General Court that the "Colledge to be built at Cambridge shall be called Harvard Colledge."