Rebels at the Bar: The Fascinating, Forgotten Stories of America’s First Women Lawyers

8. Lelia Robinson and Mary Greene: Two Women from Boston University School of Law

156 ◊8÷ Lelia Robinson and Mary Greene Two Women from Boston University School of Law Do not take sex into the practice. Don’t be “lady lawyers.” Simply be lawyers, and recognize no distinction. . . . Let no one regard you as a curiosity or a rara avis. Compel recognition of your ability. —Lelia J. Robinson, 1887 THEY GAVE COMFORT to one another, Lelia Robinson and Mary Greene, in 1888 the only two women practicing law in Boston. Greene said of their friendship, “I think it is helpful to both of us to feel that neither is ‘the only woman lawyer in Massachusetts.’”1 Robinson agreed that more women lawyers meant each could “march on with a firmer and stronger tread.”2 Women of great intellect, they also had in common New England backgrounds, diplomas from Boston University School of Law, a love of writing, and a talent for the law. They welcomed praise but eschewed flash. Robinson, born in 1850, was senior in age and had launched her legal career six years before Greene began law school. Boston born and educated, at the age of twenty-one Robinson began writing for several Boston newspapers, including the Globe, the Post, and the Times. While the precise chronology is not clear, she also married in this period and spent time in Berlin as a foreign correspondent. Rupert Chute, the bridegroom, was exposed as a philanderer and so, despite the considerable social and religious stigma of divorce, Robinson took 157 Lelia Robinson (1850-1891). (Reprinted from The Green Bag, 1890.) Mary A. Greene (1857-1936). (Reprinted from A Woman of the Century, ed. Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore [Buffalo, NY: C. W. Moulton, 1893].) 158 Lelia Robinson and Mary Greene her wandering husband to court in 1878, ended the marriage, and at the age of twenty-eight resumed the use of her maiden name.3 In the same year, she entered Boston University School of Law. Mary Greene later wrote that Robinson did not enter with the “idea of becoming an apostle of woman’s rights, for at that time her views were extremely conservative.”4 Rather, Robinson was said to like to study and “felt that a woman could find a place for the successful practice of law.”5 Robinson’s acceptance of divorce and belief in society’s ability to embrace women as lawyers suggest that she was not quite as conservative as Greene portrayed her. Boston University’s law school opened in 1872 when Belva Lockwood was still fighting to join the Washington, D.C., bar and Myra Bradwell’s case awaited a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. Pleasing some, and shocking others, the school declared itself a coeducational institution. According to tuition receipts, Robinson matriculated in October 1879. Two women had attended before her for a year and dropped out, making her the lone woman student among 150 men. She paid thirty-five dollars in tuition for her first term.6 The law school used the traditional lecture method of teaching. To help to distinguish its program from Harvard’s, the Boston University curriculum encouraged the practical application of legal concepts. The school’s location at Ashburton Place, then the heart of Boston, placed students close to the local and federal courthouses where they were expected to “observe the organization and working of courts, the actual progress of the most notable cases, the arguments of eminent counsel, the ruling of judges, the processes of decision, exception, appeal, etc.”7 Robinson arrived at Ashburton Place with the sort of practical questions common to tainted newcomers few wish to help. She introduced herself to the dean, but he introduced her neither to the faculty nor to the students.8 She was told to “sit anywhere” in the lecture hall when, in fact, seating was alphabetical. An “R,” she sat in the place of a “C,” a student too gentlemanly to oust her. Yet, unlike in Lockwood’s experience, her presence did not cause a rancorous environment in which the male scholars “growled,” although the faculty was “puzzled to understand why a woman should want to study law.”9 Lelia Robinson and Mary Greene 159 Lockwood started law school with a group and a cause; Robinson walked the halls alone and was not identified with woman suffrage. Social and intuitive by nature, she thought it “absurd not to speak to these men whom I was to meet...