Estelle Lawton Lindsey (c. 1868 – 1955) was a 20th-century journalist who was also the first female City Council member in Los Angeles, California, (1915–17) the first woman to preside over the City Council there and the first woman to act as mayor in any American city of comparable size.

Biography

Lawton was born in South Carolina, and while living in the South she engaged in

china painting China painting, or porcelain painting, is the decoration of glazed porcelain objects such as plates, bowls, vases or statues. The body of the object may be hard-paste porcelain, developed in China in the 7th or 8th century, or soft-paste porcel ...

and portrait sketching. She told an interviewer in 1935 that this "genteel pastime" was "far from remunerative," so she decided to become a writer. She gained her first experience in "reporting Chautauquas" (lectures) for the local press. She was at one time a German teacher and taught school in

Owensboro, Kentucky Owensboro is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of Daviess County, Kentucky, United States. It is the fourth-largest city in the state by population. Owensboro is located on U.S. Route 60 and Interstate 165 about southwest of Lo ...

. She also worked for the

Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax ...

in Kentucky, where she met the man she married, Dudley Lindsey. They moved to Los Angeles in 1908, making their home at 2416 Echo Park Avenue, and she wrote for the '' Los Angeles Tribune'' and the '' Los Angeles Express.'' After her City Council service, she wrote a syndicated newspaper column and was active in civic and philanthropic work.Mrs. Lindsey, First L.A. Councilwoman, 87, Dies," ''Los Angeles Times,'' November 28, 1955, page A-6
/ref>Los Angeles Public Library reference file
/ref>"Rites Set for Mrs. Lindsey," ''Los Angeles Times,'' November 30, 1955, page 13
/ref> Lindsey died at the age of 87 on November 27, 1955, in Glendale, California, after a fall in her home, and she was buried in

Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale Forest Lawn Memorial Park is a privately owned cemetery in Glendale, California. It is the original and current flagship location of Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks & Mortuaries, a chain of six cemeteries and four additional mortuaries in Southern Ca ...

. She was survived by her husband and a sister, Mrs. Charles Hite.

Political activity

Socialism

According to Sherry Katz of the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

, Lindsey was part of a "well-organized network of socialist women that operated as an influential political tendency within California's radical and women's movements during the

Progressive Era The Progressive Era (late 1890s – late 1910s) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States focused on defeating corruption, monopoly, waste and inefficiency. The main themes ended during Am ...

." This group backed Lindsey when she ran unsuccessfully on the Socialist ticket for the

California Assembly The California State Assembly is the lower house of the California State Legislature, the upper house being the California State Senate. The Assembly convenes, along with the State Senate, at the California State Capitol in Sacramento. The Ass ...

in 1912 and 1914.Sherry Katz, "Redefining the Political: Socialist Women, Party Politics and Social Reform in Progressive-Era California," citing other sources, H-Net
/ref> In the 1914 race in the 61st District, she came in second among five candidates, with 22.2% of the vote against 31% for the winner, Henry A. Wishard. But she was expelled from what was called the "Red Ticket" wing of the Socialist Party because she had supported non-Socialists in the election.

City Council

Elections

Between 1909 and 1925,

Los Angeles City Council The Los Angeles City Council is the legislative body of the City of Los Angeles in California. The council is composed of 15 members elected from single-member districts for four-year terms. The president of the council and the president pro tem ...

members were elected in a first-past-the-post at-large voting system: Voters could cast their ballots for up to nine candidates, and the eighteen candidates who received the highest number of votes in a primary election then faced the voters a month later in the final round. The top nine in that contest were declared the winners, taking their seats on July 1 of every odd-numbered year. In the 1915 final election, Lindsey was one of the nine victors, just four years after women had voted in municipal elections for the first time. The ''Los Angeles Times'' commented:

The race of Estelle Lawton Lindsey was the one remarkable feature of the Council fight. She landed in sixth place with 41,437 votes. Mrs. Lindsey bears the distinction of being the first woman to serve on the Council in Los Angeles and one of the few women in public life ever given so important a commission.

Acting mayor

Lindsey was chosen as acting council president, and on July 17 she took the chair in a session that impelled the ''Times'' to headline its story "Woman Presides Over Council; Mrs. Lindsey Wields Gavel for Day's Session." On September 11, 1915, with both Mayor Charles E. Sebastian and Council President M.F. Betkouski out of the city, Lindsey became Los Angeles's first woman acting mayor for the day. When Lindsey entered the mayor's office, she was

greeted with a salute of seventeen flashlight guns . . . and began the day's work. Later in the day, a battery of rapid-fire movie cameras was also turned on her. Through it all, Mrs. Lindsey carried the weight of office with smiling dignity, receiving scores of callers whose business ranged from bearing greetings of the Governor of Pennsylvania to seeking the loan of a quarter.

The stint had unexpected consequences two weeks later when City Attorney Alfred Lee Stephens discovered that the city could be held liable for a

default judgment Default judgment is a binding judgment in favor of either party based on some failure to take action by the other party. Most often, it is a judgment in favor of a plaintiff when the defendant has not responded to a summons or has failed to appea ...

because it had not responded to a

summons A summons (also known in England and Wales as a claim form and in the Australian state of New South Wales as a court attendance notice (CAN)) is a legal document issued by a court (a ''judicial summons'') or by an administrative agency of governme ...

served in a lawsuit seeking $117,000 in damages by a person who said his property was damaged by the "lowering of the Broadway tunnel." The summons was found in the papers that Lindsey had with her when she left the mayor's office.

Activities

Lindsey "championed public health measures, pressed enforcement of the state's anti-prostitution law, fought for greater city services for impoverished women and secured the appointment of several female deputies assigned to investigate crimes against women and children." She opposed the policy of the city's employment bureau to furnish

strikebreakers A strikebreaker (sometimes called a scab, blackleg, or knobstick) is a person who works despite a strike. Strikebreakers are usually individuals who were not employed by the company before the trade union dispute but hired after or during the st ...

to employers. Other activities included: * A campaign for better facilities for women prisoners, "and within a few weeks it is proposed to establish quarters for them on the City Inebriate Farm" where they "may be employed out of doors." * Urging the council to adopt an ordinance forbidding any person with a connection with the motion picture business from serving on the Board of Motion Picture Censors. She later advocated the establishment of separate motion-picture theaters for children under age 15. * Several initiatives to improve public health, including regulations "to compel the public bath-houses of the city to observe sanitary precautions which will prevent infection of patients" and the abolition of shared public drinking cups. * An unsuccessful attempt to require buildings, apartments, hotels and saloons to have the name and address of the owner placed above the front door.

Billboards

Lindsey was vehemently attacked by Los Angeles newspapers for her stand in opposition to a proposed—and very controversial—ordinance that would limit the placement, size and number of advertising billboards in the city. Before the ordinance was adopted, she read into the record a lengthy article published in the June 10, 1917, issue of the ''

New York Tribune The ''New-York Tribune'' was an American newspaper founded in 1841 by editor Horace Greeley. It bore the moniker ''New-York Daily Tribune'' from 1842 to 1866 before returning to its original name. From the 1840s through the 1860s it was the domi ...

'' "in which the newspapers and other big institutions of Los Angeles were assailed." She said she planned to wage a campaign against the local papers. The next week, at the last meeting before Lindsey's term was to expire, the council voted 5–3 to expunge the remarks from the written record because, as Councilman James Simpson Conwell said, he did not think it "proper or just that such a falsehood should creep into the official minutes of the council.""Vile Attack Expunged From Council Records," ''Los Angeles Times,'' June 26, 1917, page II-1
/ref>

Post-Council

She was appointed to the city Humane Commission by Mayor

Fletcher Bowron Fletcher Bowron (August 13, 1887 – September 11, 1968) was an American lawyer, judge, and politician. He was the 35th mayor of Los Angeles, California, from September 26, 1938, until June 30, 1953. He was at the time the city's longest-serving ...

in July 1944.

References

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