Endowments; Law reform; Lawyers; Boston (Mass.); Hale, Richard W.; Massachusetts. Juvenile Court (Boston); Judge Harvey H. Baker Foundation; Healy, William, 1869-1963; Open Forum National Council
Format
correspondence
Genre
Business correspondence
Date
[between 1886 and 1919?]
Physical Description
microfilm, 16 mm, b&w
Note (Reel no.)
Reel 81
Note
PDF may contain multiple grant documents.
Juvenile Court of the City of Boston, Harvey H. Baker Foundation, William Healy, M.D., Open Forum Movement, Sherborn Reformatory for Women of Mass.
This article will look at these questions and this contested terrain through the study of the first twenty-five years of the history of one organization, the Boston Legal Aid Society. I choose to focus on the first twenty-five years because I think th at time period gives us the best picture of the choices made in structuring the Boston Legal Aid Society and of the issues that have persisted to this day. It is also during this time period that one of the general counsel for the Boston Legal Aid Society was Reginald Heber Smith. Smith not only influenced legal aid in Boston, but he is also considered one of the most significant early influences on legal aid throughout the country... Boston’s Legal Aid Society was incorporated in April, 1900. It was modeled after New York and copied New York’s charter and many of its organizational methods. What seemed different about the Boston Legal Aid Society was that the leadership for development of a legal aid organization came from the bar rather than from an immigrant society or a social service group or a citizen group orientated toward social justice, as in New York and Chicago. Of the sixteen founding members of the Boston Legal Aid Society, fifteen were lawyers. These lawyers were prominent in the bar and in Boston society. There were several Presidents of the Boston Bar Association, for example, as well as one president of the American Bar Association, Moorfield Storey, who also was President of the NAACP. All had Harvard affiliations, having attended Harvard College, Harvard Law School or both.... At the time of the creation of the Boston Legal Aid Society, eight founders, the Society’s designated counsel, and one early director, Robert D. Weston, held positions with the Associated Charities. See ASSOCIATED CHARITIES OF BOSTON, TWENTIETH ANNUAL REPORT 2-11 (Nov., 1899). Three served in other capacities. Two other leaders of the Boston Legal Aid Society, Richard W. Hale, who joined the board in 1912, and Carleton Hunneman, who became Treasurer in 1919, were also involved with the Associated Charities at this time... While in law school he [Smith] worked as a volunteer at the Boston Legal Aid Society during the summers of 1912 and 1913. Reportedly it was these summers that opened his eyes to the disparity between how the rich and poor were treated before the law. After law school he was offered the job as General Counsel for the Legal Aid Society, as long as he would make a two year commitment. According to Smith, it was Ezra Ripley Thayer, Dean of Harvard Law School while Smith was a student there, who persuaded him to take the job. He worked as General Counsel for the Boston Legal Aid Society for five years, leaving at the end of 1918. In 1916, he took a leave of absence to write Justice and the Poor, a report on legal aid throughout the country, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation. When Smith left the Boston Legal Aid Society, he went to Hale and Dorr, an elite corporate law firm, where he became managing partner in 1921. He remained as managing partner at Hale and Dorr until 1956, but he remained active in supporting legal aid, both in Boston and nationally, throughout his career..." [SOURCE: Spiegel, Mark. "The Boston Legal Aid Society: 1900-1925." Massachusetts Legal History, Vol. 9, 10 Oct. 2003, pp. 18, 20, 26, 34, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.454040. Accessed 27 Sep. 2018.] "It is not always true that 'the good which men do dies with them,' as shown by the establishment in Boston of the Judge Harvey H. Baker Foundation, organized to carry on the work of the late Judge Baker of the Boston Juvenile Court. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal reports the announcement that Dr. William Healy of Chicago has been appointed director to begin his duties on April first. Dr. Healy has been at the head of the Chicago Juvenile Psychopathic Institute since 1910. He is to work in conjunction with Judge Frederick P. Cabot, now in charge of the Boston Juvenile Court, and to make psychologic examination of children referred to him by the court." [SOURCE: "JUDGE HARVEY H. BAKER FOUNDATION, BOSTON'S NEW PHILANTHROPY." The New England Medical Gazette, Volume 52, Jan. 1917, pp. 172-173. Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=VK9XAAAAMAAJ. Accessed 27 Sep. 2018.] "The prison opened in 1877 and was the second prison for women opened in the U.S. Several references note it as the oldest female correctional institution (of those still in operation) in the United States. Its original name was the Sherborn Reformatory for Women, because at the time of its establishment it was located in that town. In 1924, the town of Framingham acquired 565 acres in Sherborn, including the prison and its grounds." [SOURCE: "Massachusetts Correctional Institution – Framingham." Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Correctional_Institution_%E2%80%93_Framingham. Accessed 27 Sep. 2018.]