07-07 TABLE of CONTENTS: Lillian Jane Martin started field of gerontology DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS QUOTE by Lillian Jane Martin. Lillian Jane Martin Bored with gadfly living, Lillian Jane Martin, U.S. psychologist started the field of gerontology by opening a clinic for the aged in 1929.       She was 78, born 07-07-1851. However, lest you think she was just doing for herself, think again.       She lived to an advanced age, doing such things as traveling through the jungles of South America at 87. In her "before" career, she worked through the ranks at Stanford to become a full professor of psychology in 1911. She was the first woman to head any department there.       After mandatory retirement at 65, she got bored and began feeling old so she taught herself to type and then did strenuous exercises to strengthen her body.       In 1920 (at 69) she founded Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco, the first mental hygienic clinic for normal pre-school children.       In 1929 at 78, she started the work which has resulted in reinventing old age. Her mother desperately wanted LJM to have the opportunity to go to college so both she and her mother worked long hours to raise the tuition.       LJM tried to go to Cornell, which turned her down because she was a woman. Vassar gave her a full scholarship.       She studied psychology at Göttingen, Germany, where she had to overcome sexual discrimination but at least got a chance to get the necessary further education - something U.S. mainline colleges refused to do. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | 07-07 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS Event 07-07-1529 through 08-05-1529: Louise of Savoy and Margaret of Austria negotiated the Peace of Cambrai (The Ladies Peace) that settled many problems between Francis of France and Charles of the Holy Roman Empire. At least until some macho kings took over and started the "king of the mountain" arguments (wars). B. 07-07-1852, Vera Nikolayevna Figner - leader in the Russian Revolutionary Populist movement. A terrorist, she was captured after the assassination of Alexander II, which she planned. She was sentenced to solitary confinement for life.       After 20 years she was allowed to leave Russia. B. 07-07-1861, Dr. Nettie Maria Stevens - U.S. biologist who in 1905 announced that chromosomes X and Y were responsible for the sex of the individual. A (male) Columbia University professor also published the same findings the same year (which is not the same as the same time), and many texts claim she was only "one of the first" rather than the first - at least it says so in HER biographical information. In HIS info, there is NO mention of Stevens. Mary Surratt's body is at the left, shown after her hanging at the Washington Old Capitol prison. She was almost certainly innocent of the conspiracy that led to the death of President Abraham Lincoln. The terrible public opinion aroused by Lincoln's assassination fueled her one-sided prosecution by a military tribunal. Her son who was a conspirator was not convicted by a civilian court bound by U.S. laws. Executed 07-07-1865: Mary Surratt was hung because she kept a boarding house in which her son and John Wilkes Booth sometimes met. No proof of her involvement in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was ever submitted to the military tribunal that condemned her. In fact, there is no indication she had an idea of what was going on.       Her son, one of the original conspirators whose plan it was to kidnap Lincoln, broke with Booth at the suggestion of assassination. Mary Surratt and the three men who were actually part of the conspiracy were hung after a trial replete with suppression of evidence, legal errors, etc.       According to President Andrew Johnson, she "kept the nest that hatched the egg," and that was enough to kill her by an official act of the United States Army.       Her son who had escaped to Canada was later was tried by a civilian court. He went free when the majority of the hung jury voted for his acquittal. B. 07-07-1867, Charlotte Anita Whitney led fight for women's suffrage in California and developed into a social radical. In 1919 she was arrested for making a speech favoring communism and was sentenced to 14 years in jail (appealed and overturned). B. 07-07-1887, Beatrice Fox Auerbach - Hartford, Connecticut, business executive and philanthropist who established a foundation to train women's groups in the techniques of community organization.       She succeeded her father as president of Hartford's G. Fox and Company and developed it into the largest privately-owned retail store in the nation. B. 07-07-1908, Harriette Louisa Simpson Arnow - U.S. author who described the Souther Appalachian life and people with honesty and authenticity.       She earned a college degree which shocked her family who were descendants of original Kentucky settlers that didn't believe in women's education. She had to move to Cincinnati to live. Her most critically acclaimed best seller was Hunter's Horn (1949) Event 07-07-1992: Incited by Muslim holy men who blamed a drought on the immoral and indecent behavior of women, mobs of men in Zinder, Niger, burned bars and houses of prostitution (that they patronized) using all forms of violence against women. No estimate of the number of dead women was given or acknowledged, but it was said to be "horrifying." | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | QUOTES DU JOUR MARTIN, LILLIAN JANE:       "Age is an accident and nothing to pride oneself on. The important thing is to adapt oneself to the requirements of each successive age-class and to function in each as an active participant in life, a fully adjusted human being."             -- Lillian Jane Martin, U.S. psychologist who at age 78 started the field of gerontology. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE |