Monday, September 5, 2011

Female Lawyer to Help Victims of Gold-Diggers: Hazel Middleton - 1930


FULL TEXT: A comely young woman studying law in California has announced that she is pointing toward a very restricted practice, that of defending divorce, maintenance, alimony, and breach of promise suits for male defendants. In the language of “Boul’ Mich’” she is “muscling into the alimony racket.” This is an ideal career for bright and good looking women and if a number joined the profession it would assist the fair sex by eliminating the game known as gold-digging and return divorce and alimony to its old status whereby a deserving but abused wife who needed support can get it.

The male has had little chance to protect himself when a jury, even of fellow males, was put under the fire of a tearful beauty on the quest of heart-balm. The balm and alimony business got so that to engage in it one had to possess beauty, a baby voice and abundant lachrymation. It was considered another angle of emancipation of the sex, but it injured an honest practice so that the self-respecting woman who was deserving of alimony or support, did not feel like asking for it.

There are many cases wherein the discarded or abused wife deserves the protection the laws intended, but her gold digging sisters have edged in and made mockery of the matter. A Portia to protect the heart-balm defendant should make the merits of the case count more than the personal charms of the litigants. It will be fighting fire with fire and it will not injure the cause of the deserving wives because these fought their cases with facts and not with dainty hosery and hysterics.

[“Muscling Into A Good Racket,” The Billings Gazette (Mt.), Feb. 23, 1930, p. 4]

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* Boul’ Mich’: slang for Michigan Boulevard, referring to an area of Chicago. The term has also been used as a slang name for Boulevard Saint-Michel in Paris.

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FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 2): An Alimony Payers’ Protective League is planned by Miss Hazel Middleton, stenographer in a San Francisco law office, who is studying law with a view to specializing in the emancipation of husbands from unreasonable alimony demands.

[Untitled, photo caption, Los Angeles Times (CA.), Part I, p. 8]

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For more on the Heart Balm Racket, see:

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For more revelations of this suppressed history, see The Alimony Racket: Checklist of Posts

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