On December 12 the Hon. W. H. Mackoy, at the request of the suffragists, offered this amendment to the section on elections: "The General Assembly may hereafter extend full or partial suffrage to female citizens of the United States of the age of 21 years, who have resided in this State one year, etc." By his motion the ladies appeared before the convention in Committee of the Whole. They selected Miss Clay as their spokesman and sat in front of the speaker's stand during her address.
The only clause finally obtained in the new constitution was one permitting the General Assembly to extend School Suffrage to women; but the Legislature of 1892 made important concessions.
Among the members of the General Assembly of 1894 especial gratitude is due to Judges S. B. Vance and W. H. Beckner. The former introduced the Bill for Married Women's Property Rights in the House, giving Senator Lindsay credit for being practically its author. Judge Beckner cordially supported this bill, saying he preferred it to one of his own, which he had introduced but would push only if it should be evident that Judge Vance's more liberal bill could not become law. To the leadership of these two is due the vote of 79 ayes to 14 noes with which the bill passed the House. In the Senate it came near to defeat, but was carried through by the strenuous efforts of its friends, especially of Senators W. W. Stephenson, Rozel Weissinger and William Goebel. Senator Weissinger withdrew in favor of the House bill one of his own, not so comprehensive. The bill passed on the very last day of the session possible to finish business. The Senate vote was 21 yeas, 10 nays.[284] It was signed March 15 by Gov. John Young Brown, who always had favored it.
Another signal victory this year was School Suffrage for women of the second-class cities. Since 1838 widows with children of school age had been voters for school trustees in the country districts, and in 1888 this right was extended to allow tax-paying widows and spinsters to vote on school taxes. This general law, however, did not apply to chartered cities. The vigilance of Mrs. Farmer observed and seized the opportunity offered by the revision of city charters, after the adoption of the new constitution, to put in clauses granting full School Suffrage to all women. At her instigation, in 1892, the equal rights associations of Covington, Newport and Lexington, the only second-class cities, petitioned the committee selected to prepare a charter for such cities to insert a clause in the section on education, making women eligible as members of school boards and qualified to vote at all elections of such boards. This was done, and the charter passed the General Assembly in 1894, and was signed by Governor Brown on March 19. The influence of the State association was not sufficient, however, to have School Suffrage put in the charters of cities of the first, third and fourth classes. The Hons. Charles Jacob Bronston, John O. Hodges, William Goebel and Joel Baker did excellent service for this clause.
The changes wrought by liberal legislation and the part the State association had in securing this will be best understood by quotations from a leaflet issued by the State Association:
In 1888 the Kentucky E. R. A. was organized for the purpose of obtaining for women equality with men in educational, industrial, legal and political rights.
We found on the statute books a law which permitted a husband to collect his wife's wages.
We found Kentucky the only State which did not allow a married woman to make a will.
We found that marriage gave to the husband all the wife's personal property which could be reduced to possession, and the use of all her real estate owned at the time or acquired by her after marriage, with power to rent the same and receive the rent.
We found that the common law of curtesy and dower prevailed, whereby on the death of the wife the husband inherited absolutely all her personalty and, when there were children, a life interest in all her real estate; while the wife, when there were children, inherited one-third of her husband's personalty and a life-interest in one-third of his real estate.
I. In 1890 we secured a law which made the wife's wages payable only to herself.
II. From the General Assembly of 1892-93 we secured a law giving a married woman the right to make a will and control her real estate.
III. From the General Assembly of 1894 we secured the present Law for Husband and Wife. The main features of this are:
1. Curtesy and dower are equalized. After the death of either husband or wife, the survivor is given a life estate in one-third of the realty of the deceased and an absolute estate in one-half of the personalty.
2. The wife has entire control of her property, real and personal. She owns her personal property absolutely, and can dispose of it as she pleases.[285] The statute gives her the right to make contracts and to sue and be sued as a single woman. This enables a married woman to enter business and hold her stock in trade free from the control of her husband and liability to his creditors.
3. The power to make a will is the same in husband and wife, and neither can by will divest the other of dower or interest in his or her estate.
These splendid property laws are pronounced by leading lawyers to be the greatest legal revolution which has taken place in our history.
A section of the new constitution made it the duty of the General Assembly to provide by law as soon as practicable for Houses of Reform for Juvenile Offenders. The State Woman's Christian Temperance Union decided in 1892 to urge it to act speedily, and the Equal Rights Association co-operated heartily, with a special view to securing provision for girls equal to that for boys, and women on the Board of Managers. A joint committee from the two associations was appointed, with Mrs. Frances E. Beauchamp chairman for the former and Mrs. S. A. Charles for the latter. They compiled a bill with legal advice of Senator Bronston, who had been largely instrumental in securing the section. The unremitting labor of three years was at last crowned with success in 1896, when a bill, essentially that prepared by the women, passed the General Assembly and was signed by Gov. William O. Bradley, March 21.[286] This bill provides for two separate institutions, one for girls and one for boys, on the cottage family plan. The general government is vested in a board of six trustees, three women and three men.
From the General Assembly of 1898 the E. R. A. finally obtained the law making it mandatory to have at least one woman physician in each State insane asylum, for which they had been petitioning ten years. Representative W. C. G. Hobbs introduced the bill into the House, where it passed by a vote of 77 ayes, 4 noes. Mr. Bronston supported it in the Senate, where it received 26 ayes, one no. It was approved by Governor Bradley March 15.
In the same year the benevolent associations of the women of Louisville secured an act providing for police matrons in that city, the only first-class one in the State, which was approved by the Governor March 10.[287] The first police matron was appointed March 4, before the law required it, at the request of women and through the influence of Mayor Charles P. Weaver, Chief of Police Jacob H. Haager, Jailer John R. Pflanz and Judge Reginald H. Thompson. By the action of the State Board of Prison Commissioners this year, two women were appointed as guards for the women's wards in the penitentiary, their duties being such as usually pertain to a matron.
This year the Women's Club of Central Kentucky set on foot a movement for a free library in Lexington. Senator Bronston secured a change in the city charter to facilitate this object. The act provides that the library shall be under the control of a board of five trustees and was intentionally worded to make women eligible. Mayor Joseph Simrall appointed two of the club women, Mrs. Mary D. Short and Mrs. Ida Withers Harrison. This is the first free library established in Kentucky.