There are no women physicians in any other State institution and no law requiring them. In most of the hospitals there are training schools for nurses with women superintendents.
The State Board of Children's Guardians has a woman chairman of the executive committee, and a woman attorney.
The State Charities Aid Association has seven women on the Board of Managers, including the general secretary. Women sit on the boards of the State School for Deaf Mutes, the Home for Waifs and those of some county asylums. Most of the almshouses have matrons in the female department but there are no women on the boards of management.
A matron and three assistants are in charge of the women in the penitentiary and there is a matron at the jails of most cities. In some of them police matrons have been appointed, but no law requires this.
In the State Hospital at Trenton over eighty women are employed, including four supervisors, a librarian, stenographers, nurses, etc.
In the State Home for Boys there are over twenty women, including principal of school, teachers, matrons, typewriters, etc.
There are women on a number of Public Library Boards, and one, at least, acts as treasurer. The head librarian and all the assistants of the Plainfield public library are women. Sixty of the ninety-nine public libraries in the State employ women librarians, and five are served by volunteers. Most of the assistants in all cities are women.
Women act as masters in chancery, commissioners of deeds and notaries public, and one at least has served as district clerk.
Occupations: No profession or occupation is legally forbidden to women. Admission to the bar having been denied to Miss Mary Philbrook, in 1894, solely on account of her sex, she requested a hearing before the Judiciary Committee of the Legislature of 1895, which was addressed by Mrs. Florence Howe Hall, president of the State Suffrage Association, Mrs. Carrie Burnham Kilgore, a lawyer of Philadelphia, and Miss Philbrook herself. Soon afterward a law was enacted making women eligible to examination for admission to the bar, which, in June, was passed successfully by Miss Philbrook, who thus became the first woman lawyer. There are now eight. In 1899, Miss Mary G. Potter of the New York Bar, Miss Philbrook of the New Jersey Bar, and Dr. Mary D. Hussey of the New York University Law School, called a meeting of women attorneys at East Orange. A committee was appointed which organized the Women Lawyers' Club in New York, on June 24, with members in both States.
There are about one hundred women physicians in the State, seventy-five allopathic and the rest belonging to other schools. They are members of most of the county medical societies, which makes them members of the State Medical Society. Dr. Sarah F. Mackintosh was the first woman admitted to a county society (Passaic) in 1871. Dr. Frances S. Janney was elected president of the Burlington County Medical Society in 1900, the first to receive such an honor. The first meeting of women physicians took place in Atlantic City, June, 1900, when those of the State gave a reception to those from other States who were attending the convention of the American Medical Association. The Medical Club of Newark, the first organization of women physicians, was formed the next November, with seventeen charter members from Newark and its vicinity, Dr. Katherine Porter of Orange, president.