Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/816

 of appraisers of estates. In 1899 the powers of the Special Commissioner were made coincident with those of justice of the peace, but the authority to perform the marriage ceremony was taken from justices generally and 1s now given to specified ones only.

Women can not be justices of the peace. They may be appointed by the State to take acknowledgments of deeds but not to perform the marriage ceremony unless regularly ordained ministers.

Women at present are serving on State Boards as follows: Commissioners of Prisons, Charity and Free Public Library — two each; trustees of Insane Hospitals at Danvers, Northampton, Taunton, Worcester and Medfield — two each, and at Westborough, three; School for Feeble-minded, one; Hospital for Epileptics, two; for Dipsomaniacs and Inebriates, one; Hospital Cottages for Children, one; State Hospital and State Farm, two; Lyman and Industrial Schools, two.

It has been impossible to ascertain the number of women serving as School Trustees later than 1898. Then the records showed 194 on boards in 138 towns, but, as in many cases only the initials of the prefixes to the names were given, this is probably an underestimate. Women serve on the boards of public libraries.

Women are found in the following official positions in Boston: trustees of public institutions, two; of children's institutions, three; of insane hospitals, two; of bath departments, two; overseers of the poor, two; city conveyancer in law department, one; Superior Court stenographer, one; probation officers, two; chief matron House of Detention, one; supervisor of schools, one; members of school committee, four.


 * Massachusetts claims the first woman who ever practiced medicine in the United States — Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, who studied with her father and began in 1835, long before a medical college in the country was open to women. In 1881 Lelia J. Robinson applied for admission to the bar in Boston and the Supreme Court decided a woman to be ineligible. The Legislature of 1892 enacted that women should be admitted to the practice of law. No professions or occupations are now legally forbidden to them.


 * One of the first seminaries for women in the United States was Mt. Holyoke at South Hadley, Mass., now a