Wild Women of Washington, D.C. by Canden Schwantes

Author:Canden Schwantes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2014-06-21T04:00:00+00:00

FULL-FLEDGED LAWYERS

In March 1919, the front page of the Washington Times shared the story of a “Pretty D.C. ‘Stenog’ Now a Full Fledged Lawyer.” There are few instances in which the press refers to a male lawyer as pretty—well, let’s be honest, there are none. But this was a time when female lawyers were rare, and this pretty new lawyer was only twenty-one years old.

Pauline Floyd was born and raised in Washington, where she attended public schools before going to college at the Washington School of Law. Founded in 1896 by Ellen Spencer Mussey and Emma Gillett due to a lack of legal education opportunities for women, the Washington School of Law was not meant to be a full-fledged university. Ellen had graduated from Howard University Law School, after being denied entrance to Columbian College, which would become George Washington University, and National University School of Law, even though she had apprenticed at her husband’s law firm.

The first Woman’s Law Class was held in Ellen’s law office with three other women. Two years later, there were more teachers and a few more students, but it was still not an official school. Emma and Ellen asked the law school at Columbian College of Law to accept the women for their final year of study, but they were denied entrance because women “did not have the mentality for law.” That encouraged the women to take matters into their own hands, and in April of that year, the District incorporated the Washington College of Law. It became the first law school in the world founded by women, to have a female dean and to graduate an all-female law school class. Though the college was founded with the aim “to provide such a legal education for women as will enable them to practice the legal profession,” the first male student had enrolled the year before the school was incorporated.

Pauline specialized in domestic relations while at Washington College of Law and took the bar in January 1919. Once she passed, she became the youngest female lawyer in Washington; some at the time said she was the youngest female lawyer in the country. She entered the divorce practice, hoping to aid women in their attempts to get out of failed marriages.

The laws of the District, however, were antiquated and in favor of men. The only cause for a woman to be granted a divorce was adultery, but the burden of proof was on the woman. Pauline had a solution: “Of course, I know it’s an old, old idea, but if men and women knew that either the husband or wife could get a divorce for the asking, each would exert himself more to hold the love of husband, or wife, as the case may be.”

Shortly after this quote was published in an interview in the Washington Times, Pauline received a proposition from a Virginian postmaster and landlord. He claimed that a woman could be granted a divorce if she resided in Virginia at least one day a week for a year.

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