State's Juvenile Justice Foundation Started By First Female Judge

With Women’s History Month upon us and Law Day around the corner, it’s an appropriate time to reflect on the impact that the entry of women into the legal profession and our judiciary has had on our community and society.

The first woman lawyer in Illinois, Alta M. Hulett, was admitted to the bar in 1873. It took another 50 years for a woman to be elected judge in Illinois. Illinois’ first female judge, Mary Margaret Bartelme, was born on July 24, 1866, in Chicago.

She studied law at Northwestern University, graduating in 1894, the same year she was admitted to the Illinois bar. She then embarked on a remarkable career that would change the face of juvenile justice in Illinois and the United States.

Early in her career, Bartelme was a leading suffragette (the right to vote was not granted until 1919, 25 years after Bartelme was admitted to the bar) as well as an advocate for numerous charitable causes supporting indigent woman and children.

Likely as a result of this charitable work, then-Gov. John R. Tanner appointed Bartelme to be public guardian of Cook County in 1897. She was the first woman to occupy the office. Her tenure lasted 16 years.

In 1899, Bartelme and other reformers lobbied for and then created the Juvenile Court in Chicago, separating juvenile offenders from the adult criminal system for the first time in Illinois. That same year, Bartelme also helped establish a detention home instead of adult jail for juvenile offenders.

The Chicago Juvenile Court was described in a publication at the time in the following words: “Chicago’s Juvenile Court, which was established in 1899, was the first of its kind in the United States. Its pioneer work was directly responsible for a salutary change through the entire nation in the relation of law to delinquent children.” “The Court for Delinquent Girls,” “The Delinquent,” Vol. III, no. 12, pages 6-10; at 7.

Also during her tenure as public guardian, Bartelme established Mary Clubs, the first in her own home, as a place for girls to be supervised before their placement in foster care.

By 1923, more than 2,600 girls had been served by Mary Clubs. Elected judge in the Cook County Circuit Court in 1923, it was natural for Bartelme to be assigned to sit in the Juvenile Court, presiding for many years over the “Court for Delinquent Girls,” a special docket that she created.

Bartleme insisted that all those working in her courtroom were woman, including the clerk, court reporters and the bailiff and men were allowed in the courtroom only if they were essential to the proceedings.

Her supervising judge was quoted in “The Delinquent” as describing her in the following way: “She is an acute and well-trained lawyer with a distinctly judicial temperament. Her mind is quick and comprehensive. She has poise, cool judgment and a fine discriminating sense of justice.