1884-1959
Pioneer Woman Judge

Background.

As a teenager in Salt Lake City, Utah, Florence Ellinwood Allen attended a lecture by suffragist leader Susan B. Anthony. Subsequently, she became Anthony's protege and a lifelong feminist activist. After attending the University of Chicago Law School (1909-1910) and graduating from New York University Law School in 1913, Allen was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1914 and established a law practice in Cleveland that specialized in legal problems of special concern to women. She was appointed assistant county prosecutor for Cuyahoga County in 1919.

Judicial Career.

In 1921 Allen was the first woman in American history to become judge of a Common Pleas Court, and in 1926 she was the first female to be appointed associate justice on the Ohio State Supreme Court. Judge Allen was a "no-nonsense" jurist. In 1925 she imposed the death penalty on Frank Motto, a notorious Ohio...