s, prisons and charitable institutions. In a
letter to Mrs. Davis, John Stuart Mill says:

I am very glad to hear of the step in advance made by Rhode
Island in creating a board of women for some very important
administrative purpose. Your proposal that women should be
empanneled on every jury where women are to be tried seems to me
very good, and calculated to place the injustice to which women
are subjected at present by the entire legal system in a very
striking light.

In 1873 an effort was made to place women on the Providence School
Board, with what success the following extracts from the daily
papers show. The _Providence Press_ of April 25, 1873, says:

A shabby trick was perpetrated by the friends of John W. Angell,
which was certainly anything but "angelic," and which ought to
consign the parties who committed it to political infamy.

Yesterday, for the first time in the history of this city, women
were candidates for political honors--in the fifth ward, Mrs.
Sarah E. H. Doyle, and in the fourth ward, Mrs. Rhoda A. F.
Peckham, were candidates for positions on the school committee;
both, however, failed of an election. Mrs. Doyle received the
unanimous nomination of the large primary meeting of the National
Union Republican party, and Mrs. Peckham was run as an outside
candidate against the regular nominee. These ladies would
undoubtedly have made excellent members of the committee, and
unlike a great portion of that body, would have been found in
their places at the meetings, and we should have been glad to
have seen the experiment tried of women in the position for which
their names were presented. When the polls opened in the fifth
ward, instead of Mrs. Doyle's name being on the ballots for the
place to which she had been nominated there appeared the name of
John W. Angell, esq., and until about 11 o'clock A. M. he had
the field to himself. At that hour, however, Mrs. Doyle's friends
appeared with the "_regular_" nomination, and from that time to
the close of the polls she received 145 votes; Mr. Angell,
notwithstanding his several hours' start in the race, only
winning by a majority of 38. From this fact it is clear that had
Mrs. Doyle's name been in its proper place at the opening of the
polls she would have beaten her opponent handsomely.