delay enough single women were found to take out the
letters patent. When incorporated the original number organized the
company and built the New Century Club House in Philadelphia, which
paid five per cent. to stockholders the first year. One of the members
of this board of directors, to save time and trouble, made application
to be appointed notary public, but she was refused because the law did
not permit a woman to serve. Public attention was thus called to the
injustice of these statutes and, after much legislative tinkering,
laws were passed in 1893 giving wives the same right as unmarried
women to "acquire property, own, possess, control, use, lease, etc."
The same year women were made eligible to act as notaries public.

Dower and curtesy both obtain. If there is issue living, the widow is
entitled to one-third of the real estate for her life and one-third of
the personal property absolutely. If no issue is living, but
collateral heirs, the widow is entitled to one-half of the real
estate, including the mansion house, for her life, and one-half of the
personal estate absolutely. If a wife die intestate, the widower,
whether there has been issue born alive or not, has a life interest in
all her real estate and all of her personal property absolutely. If
there is neither issue nor kindred and no will the surviving husband
or wife takes the whole estate.

A husband may mortgage real estate, including the homestead, without
the wife's consent, but she can not mortgage even her own separate
estate without his consent. Each can dispose of personal property as
if single.

As a rule a married woman can not make a contract, but there are some
exceptions. For instance, she can contract for the purchase of a
sewing-machine for her own use. The wife must sue and be sued jointly
with the husband.

A married woman must secure the privilege from the court of carrying
on business in her own name.

The law provides that the party found guilty of adultery can not marry
the co-respondent during the lifetime of the other party. If any
divorced woman, who shall have been found guilty of adultery, shall
afterward openly cohabit with the person proved to have been the
partaker of her crime, she is rendered incapable of alienating either
directly or indirectly any of her lands, tenements or hereditaments,
and all wills, deeds, and other instruments of conveyance therefor are
absolutely void, and after her death her property desc