Until the end of the 19th century, legal profession was mainly practiced by men. Before 1918, i.e. when Poland was under partitions, Polish women often went to other countries to get education. The first Polish woman ever to obtain the right to appear in court, who practiced for many years as a lawyer, was Antonina Jackowska-Peterson, a resident of Milwaukee (WI, USA), born in Poznań. Another Polish female advocate known abroad was Helena Miropolska, whose parents came to Paris from that part of Poland which was under Russian partition. It was in Paris that Miropolska achieved great success by defending in courts people who hit newspapers’ headlines. The professional activity of another Polish woman, Helena Fleming-Czachorska, from Buffalo, who practiced in Chicago, also deserves attention. For years she represented the Polish Women’s Alliance of America as a lawyer.
This article tries to describe how the activities of the first three Polish female lawyers were presented in the newspapers of that time and what difficulties women encountered when they wanted to pursue this typically male profession at the beginning of the 20th century. For the first time, an attempt is made to recreate the facts from the lives and legal activities of the first three women of Polish origin.
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