The "age of protection" for girls was raised from 10 to 13 years in 1886; to 14 in 1888; to 16 in 1893. The penalty is imprisonment in the State prison for life or for any term of years, or for any term in any other penal institution in the commonwealth. This may be one day in the city jail.
Among various laws passed in the interests of women was one in 1895 making army nurses eligible to receive State aid. One of 1896 requires the State to inter the wife or widow of an honorably discharged soldier, sailor or marine who served during the Civil War, if she did not leave sufficient means for funeral expenses, provided she was married prior to 1870. In I9go00 it was enacted that the State should perform a similar service for the mothers of said soldiers, sailors or marines, and that this should not be with the pauper dead, in either case.
Massachusetts has detailed! laws regarding the employment of women, among them one restricting the hours of work in any mercantile establishment to fifty-eight in a week, except in retail stores during the month of December. Ten hours is a legal workday for women in general.
Separate houses of detention are required for women prisoners in cities of over 30,000.[1]
Suffrage: The original charter of Massachusetts in 1691 did not exclude women from voting. In 1780 the first constitution prohibited them from voting except for certain officers. The new constitution of 1820 limited the suffrage strictly to males.
In 1879 the Legislature enacted that a woman twenty-one years of age, who could give satisfactory evidence as to residence and who could stand the educational test (7. e., be able to read five lines of the constitution and write her name), and who should give notice in writing to the assessors that she wished to be assessed a poll tax (two dollars) and should give in under Oath a statement of her taxable property (which was not required of men, as they had the option of letting the assessors guess at the amount) should thereupon be assessed and should be entitled to register and vote for members of school boards.[2] In
- ↑ For information in regard to the laws the History is indebted to Mrs. Anna Christy (George H.) Fall, a practicing lawyer of Malden.
- ↑ This was purely class legislation, as the woman who had paid property tax was not required to pay poll-tax, and poor women could not vote without paying two dollars each year. The law was not asked for by the Suffrage Association.
