#mabel walker willebrandt

[sleepdepravity]

holy shit we love a woman (mabel walker willebrandt)

[jazzage-suggestion]

Have wild crushes on girls in your youth

[prohibitionprincesses]

Lady of the Law

Portland, Oregon 

The Roaring Twenties has much to offer a free spirit like Kayley McKnight. But like her cousin Belle, Kayley doesn't care about fashion or dancing. Kayley has a very specific career goal in mind for herself. 

She wants to go into law like her father, who died serving his country in the Great War. Following the 19th Amendment in August of 1920, the number of single women now getting hired for paid work is growing rapidly. Unfortunately, this brings the concept of the "Pink Collar Job," or the idea that women should only work certain, "feminine" jobs. So in addition to Susan B. Anthony and her war-hero dad, Kayley is also inspired by Mabel Walker Willebrandt, the female assistant attorney general of the U.S. during the Prohibition Era. Kayley fights tooth and nail to get into law school, and to be taken seriously as a student. Her chance to prove herself comes when her own mother is blackmailed by a thug named Gary Ruber. A disgraced ex-cop turned gangster, Ruber's crimes range from murder to moonshine to moonlighting as a really bad jazz singer. He wants Juliana McKnight to deliver a shipment of exceptionally dangerous liquor to his associates in Portland. The brew he'll have her transporting is so strong that the drinker is liable to start seeing his work ax running and clucking around like a chicken. Ruber unwisely broadcasts his evil plot in song over the radio, and his singing alone is reason enough to put him behind bars.

Kaylee’s investigations take her into Oregon's temperate rain-forest. Here in the wetlands, she finds a small circus troop who can act as witnesses in the case. The troop includes a pair of bickering conjoined twins who fancy themselves musicians, and a blind acrobat named Garret. Garret and the twins agree to help Kayley in her case against Ruber. The investigations take them to a number of bars throughout the wetland towns, which all serve moonshine so strong that swamp trees begin walking and telephone polls are taking off into the sky like helicopters. Somehow, the drunken quartet manage to outwit Ruber, luring him into their sideshow tent, where he finds himself trapped under the backside of a sumo wrestler called “the Ogre.” While trapped under the Ogre’s butt, Ruber confesses all of his crimes to the cops, winning Kayley the case and her law degree.

AN: Kayley's outfit was based on pictures of vintage suit dresses from the 1920s. The background is based on the three-circles symbol seen throughout “Quest for Camelot,” and the window behind Arthur's Round Table.

[contremineur]

Mabel Walker Willebrandt (May 23rd 1889—April 6th 1963), American lawyer and assistant attorney general from 1921 to 1929. Notorious for relentlessly enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment (the prohibition against the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages), she earned herself nicknames such as 'Prohibition Portia' and 'First Lady of the Law’.

[universitybookstore]

A story we did not know. New from Berkley, the late historian Hugh Ambrose, and John Schuttler who finished the book, Liberated Spirits: Two Women Who Battled Over Prohibition. Cheers!

[riversidearchives]

Los Angeles’ Powerful Portias

As an archivist at the National Archives in Riverside, I have always been enamoured of our U.S. District Court records.  The courts, in many ways, is where America enacts her ideals.  All angles of our society are revealed through the actions heard before the court:  the good, the bad and the ugly.  So when we sat down to plan posts for Women’s History Month, of course, I headed to the courts!  In particular, to a rather mundane set of registers we call the Roll of Attorneys Admitted to Practice Before the Court, 1887-1941. 

The register documents attorneys authorized to practice law before the Federal court in Los Angeles.  Women are represented in these records as early as 1902, though not in large numbers until 1912.  Los Angeles was an early center of legal scholarship for women, most of whom studied at the Los Angeles Law School, later the USC Law School under dean Frank M. Porter.  

In fact, Los Angeles was a national center for women lawyers, boasting the active Women’s Lawyers Club of Los Angeles; the first woman Superior Court judge in California, Georgia Phillips Bullock; and Mabel Walker Willebrandt, the second woman to serve as Assistant Attorney General of the United States. Willebrandt, whose signature is featured here, headed the Tax Division of the Department of Justice, making her the chief law enforcement agent of the Volstead Act, more commonly known as Prohibition.

Photograph of Willebrandt

The media often referred to these women as Portias, named after Shakespeare’s Portia from the Merchant of Venice, a notably strong woman, who, disguised as a man, saves the life of her love’s friend by utilizing the technicalities of the law in court.

Series: Roll of Attorneys Admitted to Practice before the Court, 1887-1941. Record Group 21, Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-1993. (National Archives Identifier: 606153). 

[yeoldenews]

This week being the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment I thought it’s about time we talk about Rachel & Co.’s most ardent suffragette.

Marion Weston Cottle was the older sister of Will’s kinda-sorta girlfriend Jennie. Marion and Jennie met Will through their mutual family friends the Clarkes, most likely when they visited the Clarkes in Will’s hometown of Portville, NY in the summer of 1894.

Marion and Jennie returned to Portville the next summer (1895) as well, and appear to have stayed for several months. (I suspect this was at least partially to escape the public attention their family found itself receiving after the girls’ father, a prominent attorney, was kidnapped and held for ransom by a disgruntled former client.)

At the time the letters begin (fall 1895) both Marion and Jennie were studying music at Wellesley, where the two shared an apartment. I only have two letters directly from Marion, but she is mentioned over 100 times in letters from Jennie, Rachel and various family friends.

Jennie’s letters give the impression that Marion was the outgoing and adventurous sister, while Jennie was the reserved rule-follower. Marion’s large circle of friends are regular features of Jennie’s letters (though several of these friendships seem to have been rather volatile). The letters document the many, many concerts, lectures and plays Marion attended, as well as her efforts to secure a purebred Angora kitten and attempts to learn to ride a horse “in the new style viz.: man-fashion”.

After Jennie and Will stopped speaking to one another in late-1899, Marion appears to have gone to work as a clerk in her father’s law office in Buffalo. This may have been due to the fact that her brother Edmund, who had previously practiced law with their father, was appointed as Theodore Roosevelt’s aide-de-camp around the same time.

Marion soon returned to school to study law and graduated from NYU in June of 1904. Around this time she became involved in the College Equal Suffrage League.

Marion passed the bar in New York in 1905, in New Hampshire in 1906 (reportedly only the second woman to do so), in Massachusetts in 1908, in Maine in 1910 and qualified to argue before the United States Supreme Court in 1911. She had law offices in New York, Boston and North Conway, New Hampshire. Despite all her qualifications, she was refused admittance to the American Bar Association due to her sex.

In 1911 she became the President of the National Association of Women Lawyers and associate editor of The Women Lawyers’ Journal - which was headquartered in her office in New York City. The same year she was an official New York delegate to the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention in Louisville.

Marion soon became a much sought-after lecturer on the topics of women’s suffrage and “the law of domestic relations” - specifically divorce and women’s legal and property rights.

Just before the US entered WWI Marion made news around the country by proposing the formation of a women’s cavalry unit.

In 1918 she became one of the first five women ever admitted to the American Bar Association.

Marion was a widely publicized and endorsed candidate for United States Assistant Attorney General in 1921, a position that ultimately went to Mabel Walker Willebrandt. She had hoped to use the position to help standardize divorce laws across the country.

For a time after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment Marion gave lectures educating newly enfranchised women voters on their legal rights and responsibilities.

While I’m hesitant to assign labels to people who can no longer speak for themselves, I also don’t want to fall into the stereotypical “just gals being pals” school of history - so I'm just going to state the facts...

Marion never married. She and her Wellesley classmate Cedelia Cox (who also never married) designed and built a summer home (“Sylva-of-the-Pines”) in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in 1903. While the two often worked in separate cities and sometimes lived separately (Cedelia was a music teacher in Boston and later New York, where she shared an apartment with her archaeologist/future spy niece Dorothy) they reportedly spent upwards of six months a year together in New Hampshire pursuing their shared passion for hiking and mountain climbing. According to the social columns of Buffalo newspapers Cedelia was a regular feature at Cottle family holidays, and both are rarely mentioned in the papers without the other.

After Cedelia’s death in 1922, Marion traveled to the West Coast and spent some time in California before returning to New York. She continued to practice law and lecture, and made several outspoken statements in the late 1920s criticizing corruption and the Sacco and Vanzetti verdict.

Marion died on January 28, 1930 and is buried with her parents and siblings in the family plot at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo.

[portiaadams]

Boardwalk Empire folks, go get this book. It’s the absolutely true story of Remus (he who speaks in the third person) and Mabel Walker Willebrandt (whom badass Esther Randolph was based on). It’s amazing!

[the1920sinpictures]

1926 Mabel Walker Willebrandt.

[jillyjesson]

INTEGRITY: The Women of the Supreme Court - SCOTUS

My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent. 

- Ruth Bader Gindburg

We pay a price when we deprive children of the exposure to the values, principles, and education they need to make them good citizens. 

- Sandra Day O’Connor

Until we get equality in education, we won't have an equal society. 

- Sonia Sotomayor

I've led a school whose faculty and students examine and discuss and debate every aspect of our law and legal system. And what I've learned most is that no one has a monopoly on truth or wisdom. I've learned that we make progress by listening to each other, across every apparent political or ideological divide.

- Elena Kagan

IT IS ABOUT TIME

“Of the 113 justices, 109 (96.5%) have been men. All Supreme Court justices were males until 1981, when Ronald Reagan fulfilled his 1980 campaign promise to place a woman on the Court,[52] which he did with the appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor. O'Connor was later joined on the Court by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, appointed by Bill Clinton in 1993. After O'Connor retired in 2006, Ginsburg would be joined by Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, who were successfully appointed to the Court in 2009 and 2010, respectively, by Barack Obama.[53] The only other woman to be nominated to the Court was Harriet Miers, whose nomination to succeed O'Connor by George W. Bush was withdrawn under fire.

Substantial public sentiment in support of appointment of a woman to the Supreme Court has been expressed since at least as early as 1930, when an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor encouraged Herbert Hoover to consider Ohio justice Florence E. Allen or assistant attorney general Mabel Walker Willebrandt.[54]Franklin Delano Roosevelt later appointed Allen to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit—making her "one of the highest ranking female jurists in the world at that time".[55] However, neither Roosevelt nor his successors over the following two decades gave strong consideration to female candidates for the Court. Harry Truman considered such an appointment, but was dissuaded by concerns raised by justices then serving that a woman on the Court "would inhibit their conference deliberations", which were marked by informality.[55]

President Richard Nixon named Mildred Lillie, then serving on the Second District Court of Appeal of California, as a potential nominee to fill one of two vacancies on the Court in 1971.[52] However, Lillie was quickly deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association, and no formal proceedings were ever set with respect to her potential nomination. Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist were then successfully nominated to fill those vacancies.” @wikipedia

Photo Credit: Associated Press

[suffragettecity100]

Prohibition (and suffrage)

Prohibition was passed in Congress in December of 1917. It was ratified by ¾ of the states and added to the Constitution as the 18th Amendment on January 16, 1919. It would not go into effect until January 16, 1920. It changed the course of the nation.

It’s easy to think that the push for prohibition was just a bunch of pearl-clutching teetotalers appalled at the idea of alcohol, but there were dozens of organizations from across the political spectrum and it goes all the way back to 1784 when Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote a book on the connection of alcohol and disease. In 1789, 200 Connecticut farmers formed the first temperance league in America. More and more groups became involved in temperance. Some promoted moderation in drinking; others promoted abstaining from all alcohol. Two of the most prominent groups were the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (Episode 31) and the Anti-Saloon League.  

The passage of the 18th Amendment (1919) and its eventual repeal by the 21st Amendment (1933) had much deeper roots than just getting rid of alcohol.The reasons ranged from fighting the scourge of addiction, poverty, and domestic violence to anti-immigrant and specific anti-religious views. Immigrants like the Italian, German, and Irish, regularly drank wine, beer, and spirits as part of their culture. Wine was often part of Catholic and Jewish ceremonies but not Protestant or Evangelical ones. Like any social movement, temperance groups had complex views and their own agendas including some with direct ties to the Klu Klux Klan. The suffrage and temperance movements often overlapped, but not all suffragists agreed with temperance, and not all temperance advocates agreed with suffrage. 

The actual prohibition amendment was conceived by Wayne Wheeler, leader of the Anti-Saloon League and championed by Andrew Volstead, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who helped override the veto from President Wilson to put the 18th Amendment into law and pushed through the Volstead Act to strengthen enforcement of it.

However the law was poorly written because it banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol but not private possession or consumption. Exceptions were made for “medicinal purposes” and doctors wrote phony prescriptions for it. It was also impossible to police an entire nation.This led to the rise of a normal law-abiding citizen breaking the law and engaging in illegal activities such as bootlegging, speakeasies, and home distilling operations. Overall, alcohol consumption by volume did go down but gangsterism went up and became organized into the Mafia and other criminal syndicates.

Bonus fact: Mabel Walker Willebrand (1889-1963), the first female public defender in Los Angeles (1916), was Assistant Attorney General for the United States (1921-1929) and aggressively enforced prohibition. She was known as “Prohibition Portia” and the “First Lady of the Law”. 

This week’s song pick

“Hurtin’ (on the Bottle)” by Margo Price https://youtu.be/LtxUDSRfmto 

#SuffragetteCity100 #SufferingForSuffrage

Episode 78 Sources:

http://prohibition.themobmuseum.org/the-history/how-prohibition-changed-american-culture/womens-rights/

http://www.health.am/psy/more/dr-benjamin-rush-and-his-views-on-alcoholism/

https://ehistory.osu.edu/sites/ehistory.osu.edu/files/mmh/clash/Prohibition/Sub-Narratives/nativismandprohibition.htm 

https://www.wilsonquarterly.com/stories/what-prohibition-can-teach-us-about-immigration-reform/

https://www.britannica.com/event/Prohibition-United-States-history-1920-1933#ref1215040

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance_movement_in_the_United_States#cite_note-3

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mabel-Walker-Willebrandt#ref1204056

[ticketsmycom-blog]

Mabel

Love Rock? Get in touch with Mabel in Slim's, San Francisco, don't miss the day 2019/08/19, sharp at 19:00:00. Mabel is an English female given name derived from the Latin amabilis, "lovable, dear".Mabel Alabama Pearl McVey (born 20 February 1996) is an English singer and songwriter. She rose to fame in 2017, with "Finders Keepers" becoming her first UK top 10 single, with "Don't Call Me Up" later peaking at number three on the UK Singles Chart.Mabel Ethelreid Normand (November 10, 1892 – February 23, 1930) was an American silent-film actress, screenwriter, director, and producer.Mablethorpe is a seaside town on a sandy shore in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. The population, including Sutton-on-Sea, was 12,531 at the 2011 census.Mabel Loomis Todd or Mabel Loomis (November 10, 1856 – October 14, 1932) was an American editor and writer.Mabel Elizabeth King (née Washington; December 25, 1932 – November 9, 1999) was an American film, stage, and television actress, and singer.Mabel Mercer (3 February 1900 – 20 April 1984) was an English-born cabaret singer who performed in the United States, Britain, and Europe with the greats in jazz and cabaret.Mabel Evans Dodge Sterne Luhan (pronounced LOO-hahn; née Ganson; February 26, 1879 – August 13, 1962) was a wealthy American patron of the arts, who was particularly associated with the Taos art colony.Mabel Josephine (Jo) Mackerras (7 August 1896 – 8 October 1971) was an Australian zoologist, entomologist and parasitologist.Mabel Walker Willebrandt (May 23, 1889 – April 6, 1963), popularly known to her contemporaries as the First Lady of Law, was a U.S. Read the full article

[gywair]

Hey! I got the honor of being on Historical Hotties. It’s a podcast about researching hot historical figures and ranking them. I was on the episode about crime fighters. Below are my notes and references about Mabel Walker Willebrandt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabel_Walker_Willebrandt

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/media_detail/2082505810-willebrandt/

https://themobmuseum.org/notable_names/mabel-willebrandt/

https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/willebrandt-mabel-walker-1889-1963

https://www.loc.gov/item/mm82059618/

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-jul-02-me-47028-story.html

http://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-0600712

https://books.google.com/books?id=CfGHM9KU7aEC&pg=PA736&lpg=PA736&dq=dorothy+rae+willebrandt&source=bl&ots=Ot1Hr5r5jy&sig=ACfU3U1zTmlS6XVkw1QFXoWtYaMSk5dOWA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwia_-fX5KLhAhUELa0KHdrfC3gQ6AEwDXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=dorothy%20rae%20willebrandt&f=false

https://themobmuseum.org/blog/mabel-willebrandt-prolific-prosecutor-of-prohibition-laws/

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jul/02/local/me-47028

https://sallyjling.org/2011/07/16/mabel-walker-willebrant-fascinating-women-of-prohibition/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mabel-Walker-Willebrandt

  https://books.google.com/books?id=55ctM_Uy6KgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

    Mabel Walker Willebrandt

Born May 23rd, 1889

Died April 6th, 1963 at age 73

  She was born in Woodsdale, Kansas as Mabel Elizabeth Walker.

Her family were farmers

She spent her early years traveling between prairie towns from Oklahoma to Missouri

Her father David was a local newspaper editor

She used to help him set the type for print

She was expelled from Park College in Parksville (a Presbyterian college), Missouri for being outspoken

She questioned the validity of a “virgin birth”

Reportedly she won the debate

In 1906 she began teaching in Buckley, Michigan

During this time she

Was almost lost in a blizzard

Trapped by a forest fire

Was threatened by a student with a knife

In 1910 she married Arthur Willebrandt, the principal

Together they moved to Phoenix, Arizona while Arthur recovered from tuberculosis

Mabel graduated from Arizona State University in 1911

Around this time she became severely hearing impaired and wore a hearing aid in each ear

She supposedly fixed her hair to hide them.

In 1912, they moved to Los Angeles where Mabel taught school during the day and took law classes at night

In 1916, she graduated from the University of Southern California with a masters in law

While completing her degree, Mabel began pro bono work in local police courts for mostly prostitution cases

She argued 2,000 cases as the city’s first female public defender

Her efforts led to courts permitting testimony from both women and men in these cases

This meant the male clients had to appear in court (in front of the press) as well as the female defenders

She successfully campaigned for the enactment of a revised community property statue at the state level (which involves property rights in marriages)

She was instrumental in getting the police to stop nickelodeon owners from preying on young girls during the “Rosebud Baby Case”

Apparently, the men were taking advantage of young girls during the movies

After graduation, she opened her own practice in downtown Los Angeles with Fred Horowitz (he built the famous hotel Chateau Marmont)

During World War I, she served as head of the Legal Advisory Board for draft cases

John Shepherd, perhaps the only man she really loved, who was killed in World War I.

In 1920, she moved her folks out west to be closer to her

In 1921, at 32, she was recommended by Frank Doherty (her old law professor), Senator Hiram Johnson, and all the judges in Southern California for the position of Assistant Attorney General under President Harding

Making her the highest-ranking women in the US federal government at the time and the first woman to head the Tax Division.

However, part of the issue is that no one wanted the job

It had no political advantage

It was a position that had to enforce unpopular laws

Her duties included overseeing federal taxation, federal prisons, and matters relating to the Volstead Act (the Prohibition Act)

She established the first female federal prison, Alderson federal prison in West Virginia

At the time, female prisons were too full to hold all inmates

If there was not enough space they would be housed with male inmates or otherwise alternatively punished

Sexual exploitation of women in the prison system was very high at the time

The prison was modeled as a boarding school offering classes for work-oriented fields

It had no armed guards or fences

Weirdly, still segregated

Things weren’t all great, however

In her 1929 book, The Inside of Prohibition, she described her problems

The law was too weak to do the job

The man in charge was not up to the task

She was only given volunteers to help make arrests

Things were so bad, one of her early arrests was a group that actually fielded a baseball team called the BOOTLEGGERS

She helped convinced the state department to give her boats and crews to apprehend alcohol coming into the country by boat

Reportedly, she met with the Treasury’s Prohibition unit, the US Coast Guard, and the Customs Service once and weeks later Congress okayed $11 million dollars for speed boats and equipment

She might have been the only person working to enforce prohibition

She said, “At one time it was quite apparent that no real effort was being made to put an end to such open defiance of our laws. Liquor runners operated off Florida practically in the open, in broad daylight, with little or no interference. There for years the prosecuting office and the prohibition agents engaged equally in the game of evasion of responsibility.”

In 1923, she successfully brought down the ‘Big Four of Savannah’

Reportedly the largest bootlegging ring in the US

She brought in George Remus, nicknamed ‘King of the Bootleggers’ and supposedly the inspiration for Jay Gatsby

Mabel came under a lot of trouble at one point for arresting Helen Morgan, a popular singer who had been reportedly duped into running a speakeasy

She regularly made the society magazines as a bit of a villain

She also argued to reform prisons for young offenders

She is credited with starting the prison work programs for male prisons

She started the first record keeping system for federal inmate populations

In 1924, Mabel and her husband Arthur got divorced

They were separated in 1916

Her mother-in-law moved in with Mabel and Arthur but Mabel financially supported the whole family

Reportedly because after putting Arthur through law school, he was unwilling to pay his share of expenses

In 1925, she adopted a two-year-old daughter named Dorothy Rae

Whom she raised with her friends

Feminism, Sexuality, and Politics by Estella B. Freedman

The book mentions that this was a more common practice at the time for career women that wanted a family.

Her parents took over when she was in Washington

Back in Prohibition, however, Mabel prosecuted 48,734 cases between 1924 and 1925, of which resulted in 39,072 convictions

278 cases went to the Supreme Court

She argued 40 of those cases

In 1927, she devised the plan to catch gangsters with tax evasion and in 1931 successfully prosecuted Al Capone

She recommended J. Edgar Hoover to head the FBI

In 1928, she campaigned for Republican candidate Herbert Hoover

To do this, she would address Methodist ministers and slam Hoover’s Democrat opponent, Al Smith as a ‘wet’ candidate

She began timing speakeasy raids to coincide with the Democratic convention

She was recognized as a major force behind getting Hoover elected

She took political help anywhere she could get it including the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Ku Klux Klan saying, “I have no objection to people dressing up in sheets if they enjoy that sort of thing.”

For her service, she expected to be appointed Attorney General but was snubbed

In 1928, she resigned her post and returned to private practice

Mabel’s first case outside of the government was for California Fruit Industries that made wine and went on to serve as a lobbyist for the industry

CFI’s first big product push with her was Vine-Glo

Which was a concentrate that if added to water and sugar and left alone for two months made wine at home

Her casework set the foundation for the basic interpretations of the 16th and 18th amendments

In 1930, Mabel successfully argued for Frederick Albert Cook’s release from prison

He had been falsely imprisoned when several of his business partners committed fraud

Because his lawyer, Joseph Weldon Bailey, had a personal problem with the judge, he lost the case

Mabel managed to get him off his 14-year sentence in 7

Cook claimed to be the first explorer to reach the North Pole

In 1950, she served as counsel to the Screen Directors Guild

She defended the studios during the “Red Scare” and Joe McCarthy

She represented Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Aviation Corp. of America

Her famous clients include

Louis B. Mayer

Jean Harlow

Clark Gable

Jeanette MacDonald

She also began defending bootleggers she had helped put away

She went on to pioneer the fields of aviation and radio law

She was the first woman to chair a committee for the American Bar Association for aeronautical law

She got her pilot’s license and promoted air travel with Amelia Earhart and Jacqueline Cochoran (created the Women’s Auxillary Army Corps and Women Airforce Service Pilot organizations and was the first woman to break the sound barrier)

She received an Honorary Doctorate from the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce

Due to intense criticism of her role in Al Smith losing the presidency, as her rhetoric was seen as anti-Catholic, she converted to Catholicism

Later in life, she worked to destroy many of her personal records (especially from when she was Attorney General)

She, in fact, was overlooked by several early women’s history studies as she purposely erased many of her personal histories

Which is why much of what we know comes from her legal work

Mabel Walker Willebrandt died of lung cancer in Riverside, California

She was survived by her adopted daughter, Dorothy Rae (Van Dyke)

Her lifelong friend, Judge John J. Sirica, was quoted as saying, “If Mabel had worn trousers, she could have been president.”

Nicknames

“First Legal Lady of the Land”

“Prohibition Portia” (which is a joke from Julius Caesar–it’s Brutus’s wife)

“Deborah of the Drys”

“Mrs. Firebrand.”

Fun facts

She owned a farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Once advised a prostitute she worked for on “going straight”

Mabel looked over her books and said to keep working six more months

Then ended up footing the rest of the bill herself to get the woman and her sons into a nice home

Quotes

“Give me the authority and let me have my pick of 300 men and I’ll make this country as dry as it is humanly possible. There’s one way it can be done – get at the source of supply. I know them and I know how they could be cut off. I have no patience with this policy of going after the hip-pocket and speakeasy cases. That’s like trying to dry up the Atlantic Ocean with a blotter.”

In reference to herself “an instrument of God”

  Physical Hawtness: 2/5

Described as Comely

Sort of an Elisabeth Moss

More of the way she carries herself than her looks (substance over style)

Mental Hawtness: 5/5

She started school at age 13

was teaching at age 17

a principal at 22

Assistant Attorney General at 32

Social Impact: 3/5

For her time, she made a huge splash

Lots of firsts

Set a tone for the whole decade of the ‘20s

Je Ne Sais Quoi: 2/5

Problematic

Reformed?

Sounds too unbelievable for a movie

Historical Hotties – Mabel Walker Willebrandt Hey! I got the honor of being on Historical Hotties. It's a podcast about researching hot historical figures and ranking them.

[audiobookers]

New Audiobook has been published on http://www.audiobook.pw/audiobook/last-call-the-rise-and-fall-of-prohibition-4/

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America’s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America’s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages. From its start, America has been awash in drink. The sailing vessel that brought John Winthrop to the shores of the New World in 1630 carried more beer than water. By the 1820s, liquor flowed so plentifully it was cheaper than tea. That Americans would ever agree to relinquish their booze was as improbable as it was astonishing. Yet we did, and Last Call is Daniel Okrent’s dazzling explanation of why we did it, what life under Prohibition was like, and how such an unprecedented degree of government interference in the private lives of Americans changed the country forever. Writing with both wit and historical acuity, Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces: the growing political power of the women’s suffrage movement, which allied itself with the antiliquor campaign, the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities, the anti-German sentiment stoked by World War I, and a variety of other unlikely factors, ranging from the rise of the automobile to the advent of the income tax. Through it all, Americans kept drinking, going to remarkably creative lengths to smuggle, sell, conceal, and convivially (and sometimes fatally) imbibe their favorite intoxicants. Last Call is peopled with vivid characters of an astonishing variety: Susan B. Anthony and Billy Sunday, William Jennings Bryan and bootlegger Sam Bronfman, Pierre S. du Pont and H. L. Mencken, Meyer Lansky and the incredible—if long-forgotten—federal official Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who throughout the twenties was the most powerful woman in the country. (Perhaps most surprising of all is Okrent’s account of Joseph P. Kennedy’s legendary, and long-misunderstood, role in the liquor business.) It’s a book rich with stories from nearly all parts of the country. Okrent’s narrative runs through smoky Manhattan speakeasies, where relations between the sexes were changed forever, California vineyards busily producing sacramental wine, New England fishing communities that gave up fishing for the more lucrative rum-running business, and in Washington, the halls of Congress itself, where politicians who had voted for Prohibition drank openly and without apology. Last Call is capacious, meticulous, and thrillingly told. It stands as the most complete history of Prohibition ever written and confirms Daniel Okrent’s rank as a major American writer.

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The Prohibition Portia

Despite Prohibition, booze flowed freely in 1928 New York thanks to bootleggers and lax enforcement by everyone from cops to judges. One major exception was Mabel Walker Willebrandt, a U.S. Assistant Attorney General from 1921 to 1929 who among other things handled cases concerning violations of the Volstead Act. Oct. 20, 1928 cover by Constantin Alajálov. Although Willebrandt herself enjoyed the…

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Mabel

Mabel is an English female given name derived from the Latin amabilis, "lovable, dear".Mabel Alabama Pearl McVey (born 20 February 1996) is an English singer and songwriter. She rose to fame in 2017, with "Finders Keepers" becoming her first UK top 10 single, with "Don't Call Me Up" later peaking at number three on the UK Singles Chart.Mabel Ethelreid Normand (November 10, 1892 – February 23, 1930) was an American silent-film actress, screenwriter, director, and producer.Mablethorpe is a seaside town on a sandy shore in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. The population, including Sutton-on-Sea, was 12,531 at the 2011 census.Mabel Loomis Todd or Mabel Loomis (November 10, 1856 – October 14, 1932) was an American editor and writer.Mabel Elizabeth King (née Washington; December 25, 1932 – November 9, 1999) was an American film, stage, and television actress, and singer.Mabel Mercer (3 February 1900 – 20 April 1984) was an English-born cabaret singer who performed in the United States, Britain, and Europe with the greats in jazz and cabaret.Mabel Evans Dodge Sterne Luhan (pronounced LOO-hahn; née Ganson; February 26, 1879 – August 13, 1962) was a wealthy American patron of the arts, who was particularly associated with the Taos art colony.Mabel Josephine (Jo) Mackerras (7 August 1896 – 8 October 1971) was an Australian zoologist, entomologist and parasitologist.Mabel Walker Willebrandt (May 23, 1889 – April 6, 1963), popularly known to her contemporaries as the First Lady of Law, was a U.S. Read the full article