for six bills drawn by Mr. Sewall: 1. To give mothers the equal care, custody and education of their minor children. 2. To give married women a right to appoint guardians for their minor children by will. 3. To repeal the act of 1887 limiting the inheritance of personal property. 4. To regulate and equalize the descent of personal property between husband and wife. 5. To equalize curtesy and dower and the descent of real estate between husband and wife. 6. To enable husbands and wives to make gifts, contracts and conveyances directly with one another, and to authorize suits between them.
Addresses in support of the petitions were made by Mr. Sewall Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Stone, Mr. Blackwell, the Hon. George A. O. Ernst, Miss Robinson, George H. Fall and others. All these measures were refused. Several new statutes for the better protection of women were passed this year, however, at the instance of Mr. Sewall, among them one providing severe penalties for. any person who should aid in sending a woman as inmate or servant to a house of ill fame; one prohibiting railroads from requiring women or children to ride in smoking cars; one providing that women arrested should be placed in charge of police matrons.
On April 23 Municipal Suffrage was defeated in the House, 50 yeas, 121 nays. License Suffrage, after a prolonged contest, passed by 118 yeas, 110 nays, and was defeated in the Senate, 20 yeas, 19 nays.
1889 — At the hearing of January 31 the attendance was larger than ever before. Prof. W. H. Carruth, Franklyn Howland and the Rev. J. W. Hamilton (afterwards Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church) were added to the usual list of speakers.
On February 4 a hearing was granted to the W. C. T. U. for Municipal Suffrage, and on February 8 one was given to the remonstrants. The Hon. John M. Ropes, the Rev. Charles B. Rice, the Rev. Dr. Dexter of the Congregationalist and Arthur Lord spoke in the negative. They said they were employed as counsel by the remonstrants, whose names and numbers they declined to give. As Mr. Lord was unable to complete his argument in the allotted time, at his request a further hearing was granted on February 11. Extracts were read from letters by
