Woman of the Century/Alice Parker

PARKER, Miss Alice, lawyer, born in Lowell, Mass., 21st April, 1864. She attended the public schools and was graduated from the high school in Lowell. ALICE PARKER. She entered the Boston Latin school, which she left to take up the study of medicine. Her father is the well-known Dr. Hiram Parker, of Lowell, and it was natural that her tastes should run in that direction. On her father's death, being left an only daughter with a widowed mother and in possession of a considerable estate, she felt the necessity for educating herself to a pursuit where she could eventually manage her affairs. Not being in very robust health, she went in 1885 to California, where, regaining her health, she entered upon a course of law studies. She continued her studies under the tuition of a prominent lawyer in that State. She applied for admission to the supreme court of California in the July term of 1888, and in a class of nineteen applicants took the first place and was admitted without consultation by the full bench in open court, a distinction seldom shown by that rigid tribunal. Equipped with a thorough theoretical knowledge of law, she began at once to enter into the practice, preparing briefs for lawyers and searching for precedents and authorities among the thousands of volumes of reported cases from the highest tribunals of England and America. As she was getting into active practice, her mother's health required her to return to the East. She was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1890 and entered into active practice in Boston, retaining her residence in Lowell and also having her evening office and a special day each week for Lowell clients. She is a general practitioner and tries or argues a case irrespective of any specialty, though probate business has come to her in large portions by reason, no doubt, of her series of learned and highly interesting articles published in the "Home Journal," of Boston, under the title of "Law for my Sisters." Those contain expositions of the law of marriage, widows, breach of promise, wife's necessaries, life insurance on divorce, sham marriages and names. When completed, they will be published in book form. They have been largely quoted by the press and entitle the author to a place among the popular law-writers. Miss Parker devotes her time solely to her profession. Though she does not enter into the spirit of becoming a public reformer for suffrage and woman's rights, she assists with her talents and labor any object having in view the amelioration of her sex. She is the author of many amendments before the Massachusetts legislature affecting property rights of women, and she has made it her task to procure such legislation at each session as will accomplish that end.