ced and rejected and
it required a tragedy to obtain a new law. Mrs. Naramore of Coldbrook,
Mass., went insane and killed her six young children when she learned
that their father intended to give them away and could legally do so.
This deeply stirred the Rev. Charles H. Talmage, who had conducted the
funeral service, with the six little coffins ranged before the pulpit.
He made a careful inquiry into all the circumstances and gave a full
account of them in the Boston _Herald_ of April 15, 1901 (republished
in the _Woman's Journal_ of April 27). He gave his time and the State
Suffrage Association paid his expenses while he went through the State
enlisting the support of different organizations of women to secure a
change in the law. Mr. Blackwell also put in much time for this
purpose.

When the Equal Guardianship bill was introduced by Representative
George H. Fall of Malden it was backed not only by the suffrage
association but by the State Federation of Women's Clubs, the State W.
C. T. U., the Women's Relief Corps, the Boston Children's Friend
Society and more than a hundred other organizations, aggregating
34,000 women. Among them the Anti-Suffrage Association was not
included. For six years it had been circulating, under its official
imprint, a leaflet against the proposal to give mothers equal custody
and control of the children and in defense of the law as it stood.

The Committee on Probate and Chancery reported adversely by 8 to 3.
The outlook for its passage seemed so dark that Mr. Fall came to the
_Woman's Journal_ office and asked if it might not be better to drop
it and await a more propitious time. Miss Blackwell urged him to push
it to a test. On May 27 it was debated in the House. Representative
Marshall of Gloucester said that the Probate Judges were all opposed
to it; that its advocates were "sentimentalists" and that "it would
create strife, separation and divorce." He added: "Those who appeared
for it before the committee were practically the same crowd that
appeared for woman suffrage." Representative Sleeper exclaimed: "If
you want to enact legislation which will disrupt the home and sunder
the tenderest and most sacred relations, pass this bill!" The House
rejected the committee's adverse report by a viva voce vote and the
next day passed the bill without further debate. It passed the Senate
by a large majority. Thanks and praises were showered upon
Representative Fall, who modestly said that t