Department of English

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From the Archives: Photograph of Penn’s first female law graduate

Among those in the photo of the Penn Law School Class of 1883 is Caroline Burnham Kilgore, the first women to gain admission to and graduate from the law school. She became the first female lawyer in Pennsylvania.

In the sepia-toned photograph, a woman stands slightly apart from the crowd atop the stairs in front of the massive wooden doors of College Hall. Looking at the camera, she is turned slightly to the side, her head bare, dark hair parted down the middle and pulled tightly back, a broach clasping the lace at her throat. She is the only woman among the 43 posing for the image. The others are all men, dressed in dark suits with white shirts, wearing or holding top hats, bowlers, and skimmers, some also with canes.

Pictured is the graduating class of Penn Law School (now Penn Carey Law) in 1883. Caroline Burnham Kilgore (1838-1909) was the first woman to gain admission to the law school, in 1881, and to receive the LL.B., in 1883. She was the first woman admitted to the Pennsylvania bar, becoming the state’s first female lawyer.

“It is an amazing photograph not just because of what it documents, but it actually belonged to her,” says J.M. Duffin, assistant University archivist. On the back, printed is the name of the photography studio: “Broadbent & Taylor, 912 & 914 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia.” Written in pencil, probably by the original framer, is “Mr. Kilgore, 605 Walnut, 517 Preston”: Walnut Street was the address of the Kilgore family law office and Preston Street was their home in West Philadelphia, Duffin says.

“Her very presence in the photo offers a glimpse into her personality as someone who had a clear, proud vision of herself in spite of the many hardships she likely faced. This image shows how photographs can sometimes capture things that documents alone cannot,” Duffin says.

The photograph, measuring 10x13 inches, was a recent gift of Peter Conn, retired professor of English and former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “We have had the photo in its handsome frame for decades. I do not recall where I picked it up, but I assume at a thrift shop, or perhaps even an antique dealer, of which there used to be many in Philadelphia,” Conn wrote in an email. “The College Hall steps confirmed that it was obviously a Penn picture. I was delighted to learn from Jim Duffin how significant the picture proved to be.”

The photo is “pretty rare,” Duffin says, because the Archives has very few group class photos from the law school or the professional schools during that period, although it has a good collection of undergraduate students in group photos from the mid-1860s.

According to materials in the Archives, Kilgore was born in Vermont, orphaned at 12, and financed her own education by doing domestic work and teaching. Prior to her admission to Penn, she was the first woman to receive a medical degree in New York state, in 1865, and was among the first class of women admitted to clinical study at Bellevue Hospital.

In Philadelphia she headed a “French School for Young Ladies,” and began studying law with Damon Kilgore, who graduated from Penn Law in 1867. They married in 1876 and had two daughters, Carrie and Fannie. The couple was active in the women’s suffrage movement and fought for more than a decade for her to be admitted to law school. “She had already been doing legal work with her husband for several years,” Duffin says.

At Penn Law while in her early 40s, she was nearly two decades older than her classmates, married, with two very young children (ages 1 and 3) at home. “Being a working mother while attending law school is very unusual as well,” Duffin says. “In a way she was far ahead of her time being a mother and career woman at the same time.”

After graduating, Caroline Kilgore was the first woman admitted to the Orphans’ Court of Philadelphia. She had to lobby to be admitted to other courts and was accepted to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and lower courts after an act of the legislature in 1885. She was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1890.

Another notable member of the Penn Law Class of 1883 depicted in the photo, Duffin says, is Morris Rex Bockius, one of the partners of the Philadelphia firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, known today as Morgan Lewis.