The records of the Chicago’s Women’s Club show that in 1891 Mrs. Perry Smith, a member of the CWC recommended the creation of a juvenile court so that children “might be saved from contamination of association with older criminals” (Platt, 2009, p. 128). Furthermore, other members of the CWC persuaded Judge Richard Tuthill to hold a separate court for children on Saturday mornings (Platt, 2009). The CWC assigned a representative to this special court who acted in the capacity of probation officer and adviser to the judge. Judge Tuthill was later quoted in the Annals of the Chicago Women’s Club as saying about the CWC that:
The work of this noble organization was initial, persistent and effective. Well do I remember how many years ago, when
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20). She became the chairman of the committee on compulsory education and began lobbying for better handling of children who were constantly truant from school. Appearing before a Legislative committee in Springfield, Illinois, Flower said, “One of the inalienable rights of every American child should be the right to an elementary education; and there are in this city at least ten thousand children, helpless to protect themselves or to know what the deprivation means, who will be deprived of this right if you Illinois legislators fail to do your duty” (Farwell, 1824, p. 21). The legislature was moved by her words and passed the Parental School Law in Illinois. When in 1894, a new mayor was elected and he chose not to re-appoint her to the School Board, there was such a hue and cry she was quickly nominated to be a candidate for a position of Trustee of the University of Illinois. In the election that followed, she won by more than 184,000 votes – becoming the first woman in Illinois ever elected to this office (Farwell,