This was held in Cooper
Institute, under the auspices of the Woman Suffrage
Association.[231] Had Mr. Stewart provided a permanent home for
working women it would have been but a meager return for the
underpaid toil of the thousands who had labored for half a century
to build up his princely fortune. But even the idea of such an act
of justice died with him.

In 1879 that eminent philanthropist Dr. Hervey Backus Wilbur,
superintendent of the State Idiot Asylum at Syracuse, urged the
passage of a law requiring the employment of competent women as
physicians in the female wards of the State insane asylums.
Petitions prepared by him were circulated by the officers of the
Women's Medical College, of the New York Infirmary, by Mrs.
Josephine Shaw Lowell of the State Board of Charities, and by Drs.
Willard Parker, Mary Putnam Jacobi, and other eminent physicians of
New York. The bill prepared by Dr. Wilbur was introduced in the
Assembly by Hon. Erastus Brooks, and required the trustees of each
of the four State asylums for the insane, "to employ one or more
competent, well-educated female physicians to have the charge of
the female patients of said asylum, under the direction of the
medical superintendents of the several asylums, as in the case of
the other or male assistant physicians, and to take the place of
such male assistant physician or physicians in the wards of the
female patients." Although Dr. Wilbur stood at the head of his
profession, his authority upon everything connected with the
feeble-minded being not only recognized in this country but in
Europe also as absolute, yet this bill, which did not contemplate
placing a woman in charge of such an institution, and which was so
purely moral in its character, met with ridicule and opposition
from the press of the State, to which Dr. Wilbur made an exhaustive
reply, showing the need of women as physicians in all institutions
in which unfortunate women are incarcerated.

When the fall elections of 1879 approached, a circular letter was
sent to every candidate for office in the city, asking his views on
the question of woman suffrage, and delegations waited on the
nominees for mayor. Mr. Edward Cooper, the Republican candidate,
declared he had no sympathy with the movement, while Hon. Augustus
Schell, the Democratic candidate, received the ladies with great
courtesy, and avowed himself friendly at least to the demand for
equal wages and better opportunities for educ