Alice Parker Lesser

Alice Parker was born in 1863 (some sources give 1862 or 1864), in Lowell, Massachusetts, the only child of Dr. Hiram Parker and Annie G. Trafton Parker. She graduated from Lowell High School and moved to California in 1885 for her health.Frances Elizabeth Willard, Helen Maria Winslow, and Sallie Elizabeth Joy White, [https://books.google.com/books?id=SGQuAAAAYAAJ&dq=Alice+Parker+Lesser&pg=PA372 Occupations for Women] (Success Company 1897): 372. She passed the bar examination in San Francisco in 1888, after studying independently and with the lawyer who would become her husband; in 1890, she became the third woman admitted to the bar in Massachusetts.Albert Nelson Marquis, ed., [https://books.google.com/books?id=8dDUv19AKv4C&q=daughter&pg=PA587 Who's Who in New England, Volume 1] (A. N. Marquis 1909): 587.

Alice Parker began her law practice in Boston in 1890.[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6822644/alice_parker_lesser_as_clubwoman_1904/ "Club Women of Massachusetts"] Boston Post (April 22, 1904): 7. via Newspapers.com{{open access}} A trial lawyer and general practitioner, in the 1890s she used her legal knowledge (something extremely rare for a woman of that era to possess) for the benefit of women. She lectured and published a series of articles in the “Home Journal” of Boston under the title of “Law for my Sisters”, by which she explained to women the law of marriage, widows, breach of promise, wife’s necessaries, life insurance on divorce, sham marriages, and names.[https://books.google.com/books?id=3nAEAAAAYAAJ&dq=Alice+Parker+Lowell+High+School&pg=PA557 "Alice Parker"] in Frances Elizabeth Willard and Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, eds., American Women: Fifteen Hundred Biographies (Mast Crowell and Kirkpatrick 1897): 557. She also authored many amendments to the Massachusetts legislature affecting property rights of women.

She was president of Portia, an organization of women lawyers and law students in Boston, and also president of Pentagon, a social organization for professional women.Jane Cunningham Croly, [https://books.google.com/books?id=OFJKn1HaKiAC&dq=Alice+Parker+Lesser&pg=PA659 The History of the Woman's Club Movement in America] (H. G. Allen 1898): 658-659. She was a member of the Women Lawyers' AssociationJean H. Norris, [https://books.google.com/books?id=BO5CAQAAMAAJ&dq=Alice+Parker+Lesser&pg=PT131 "The Women Lawyers' Association"] Women Lawyers' Journal (January 1915): 28. and the Massachusetts Federation of Women's Clubs, where she chaired the Committee on Legislation.

Alice Parker Lesser spoke frankly about gender in the legal profession. "I and other women lawyers have lied when we said that we were on an equal basis with men in our profession," she declared to a Boston newspaper in 1912. "Women lawyers can earn money, but not fame... Suffrage is the one cure."Virginia G. Drachman, [https://books.google.com/books?id=izzUtQc5H5wC&dq=Alice+Parker+Lesser&pg=PA215 Sisters in Law: Women Lawyers in Modern American History] (Harvard University Press 2001): 215. She also wrote about the political deprivation of women: "She has been deprived of all civic imagination, all civic knowledge, and all civic responsibility, so far as many could deprive her.... Will there be women who will make good Presidents? That is another question, and one to which I give the ready answer, yes."Alice Parker Lesser, [https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6822738/alice_parker_lesser_on_a_woman/ "A Woman President a Possibility"] Cameron County Press (21 December 1905): 14. via Newspapers.com{{open access}}

Alice Parker Lesser was part of the American delegation to the International Woman Suffrage Alliance congress in 1911, at Stockholm, representing Massachusetts.[https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=t3s-AAAAIBAJ&sjid=EFoMAAAAIBAJ&pg=1200%2C1629247 "For Women's Suffrage; International Meeting Held at Stockholm"] Boston Evening Transcript (June 13, 1911): 11. Later in life, as Alice Parker Hutchins, she was editor of the Women Lawyers' Journal and was based in New York City.[https://books.google.com/books?id=vZIqAAAAYAAJ&dq=Alice+Parker+Hutchins&pg=PT52 Masthead, Women Lawyers' Journal] (January 1921): 13. After suffrage was achieved, she was active with the League of Women Voters.Jill Norgren, [https://books.google.com/books?id=yuQWCgAAQBAJ&dq=Alice+Parker+Hutchins&pg=PA181 Rebels at the Bar: The Fascinating, Forgotten Stories of America's First Women Lawyers] (NYU Press 2016): 181. {{ISBN|9781479835522}}

Alice Parker married fellow lawyer Josephus Mona Lesser in 1895, in New York. She was widowed when he died in 1902, after a head injury sustained in a fall on the Boston courthouse steps.[https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=PpE-AAAAIBAJ&sjid=JFoMAAAAIBAJ&pg=3028%2C1760778 "A Well-Known Boston Lawyer; J. Mona Lesser Dies Suddenly from the Result of a Fall"] Boston Evening Transcript (February 14, 1902): 2. She remarried in 1914, to Roger Hutchins.[https://books.google.com/books?id=5jk1AAAAIAAJ&dq=Hiram+Parker+Trafton+Alice+Lesser&pg=PA587 "Alice Parker Hutchins"] in Albert Nelson Marquis, ed., Who's Who in New England (A. N. Marquis 1915): 587. She died in 1939, aged 76 years.

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• Alice Parker Lesser, [https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6822698/alice_parker_lesser_on_womanliness_of/ "Womanliness of Self-Supporting Woman"] (1906 essay)
• Alice Parker Lesser, [https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6822738/alice_parker_lesser_on_a_woman/ "A Woman President a Possibility"] (1905 essay)
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20161001195927/http://66.43.22.135/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Hutchins&GSiman=1&GSst=21&GRid=156897643&df=np& Alice Parker Hutchins' gravesite] on Find a Grave.

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Category:1939 deaths

Category:American lawyers

Category:Suffragists from Massachusetts

Category:1863 births

Category:Lawyers from Lowell, Massachusetts

Category:Lawyers from Boston

Category:19th-century American women lawyers

Category:19th-century American lawyers