Address…Before the Legislature of PA…
Kilgore, Carrie Burnham. The Address of Carrie Burnham Kilgore Before the Legislature of Pennsylvania, Delivered...March 23d, 1881. Philadelphia: Allen, Lane & Scott, 1881.
8vo; printed wrappers; chipping to edges and spine; short tear to edge of front wrapper.
First edition. A presentation copy, annotated on the front wrapper: Received April 18, A.D. 1883, from Mr. Damon Kilgore, Reading.
The Kilgore’s presumably circulated a number of copies of the pamphlet upon its publication, including this one, received from the author's husband. The unknown recipient made accounting annotations on the rear wrapper.
Kilgore’s address before the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in March of 1881 was the culmination of a long process of petitioning the state courts and legislature for a woman’s right to practice law in the state. As she recounts in her address, in 1874 she was refused by the Board of Examiners the opportunity to take the qualifying exam and was referred to the courts; when she appealed to the courts, she was denied; when two separate bills were introduced into the state legislature forbidding the refusal of admission to practice law on grounds of sex, they fell just short of passing. Kilgore's appearance in front of the House, however, would prove successful. Citing “equal protection of law” granted by the Fourteenth Amendment, and asserting that, “in natural rights there is no sex,” Kilgore finally succeeded in persuading legislators to pass a bill guaranteeing a woman’s right to practice law in Pennsylvania. As a result, Kilgore became the first woman admitted to the study of law at the University of Pennsylvania (1881), the first woman to practice law in the lower courts (1885), and the first woman to practice in the State Supreme Court (1890), thus paving the way for generations of female lawyers after her.
Carrie Burnham Kilgore (1838-1909) was also the first woman to receive a medical degree in New York (1865) and was a tireless fighter for women’s suffrage. In the elections of 1871, Kilgore tried to cast her ballot in Philadelphia but was refused. This allowed her the opportunity to file a lawsuit against the state for violation of her Fourteenth Amendment rights, thus opening the suffrage battle on the legal front. Though she never lived to see women receive the vote in Pennsylvania, her arguments in front of the State Supreme Court on that matter were an important contribution to the movement.
Sources:
Notable American Women, Volume II, pp. 329-330.
Gaskell, Tamara. “A Citizen's, not a Woman's, Right: Carrie Burnham v. the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.” Historical Society of Pennsylvania online. http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=1327
Majewicz, Cary. “Who argued for woman suffrage before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1873?” Historical Society of Pennsylvania online. http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=1562
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