Former Home of Mabel Clapp Lord - Public Health Advocate & Anti-Suffragist who Registered to Vote

From her home here, Mabel Clapp Lord led a life committed to social reform, advocating for safe, affordable housing, improvements in public health, and, for a time, against women’s suffrage. In February 1910, at a hearing to amend the Massachusetts State Constitution, Mabel, representing those opposed to women’s suffrage, remarked, “There was nothing progressive in producing new burdens for women.”³ Eight years later, Mabel shed her anti-suffrage stance and registered to vote.¹⁶

Mabel Clapp Lord (MIT Class of 1898), born in 1865, studied Geology, Biology, and Ethnology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1895 through 1897. In 1901, she married Dr. Frederick T. Lord and moved to Hotel Royal at 295-297 Beacon Street. Four years later, they purchased 305 Beacon Street, where they lived until their deaths, three months apart, in 1941.^1,19

From 1905 through 1915, Mabel served on the Boston Standing Committee of the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women (MAOFESW). With MIT classmate and noted MAOFESW leader Mary Baker Strong (MIT Class of 1897), Mabel co-signed a May 1912 letter to the Boston Transcript's editor: "We, the undersigned Unitarian women, deeply interested in the welfare of our Church and State, in our own name and in behalf of the many hundred Unitarian women belonging to the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women, earnestly protest against the action indorsing woman suffrage, taken at the annual business meeting of the American Unitarian Association at Tremont Temple Tuesday afternoon, May 21." ¹⁵ Despite their opposition to the Unitarian Church's position on voting, both remained in church committees.

As chair of the Women’s Municipal League of Boston’s Press Committee since November 1910, Mabel understood the power of the Press. The League, founded in 1908 by Katherine Roosevelt Bowlker to educate and empower women, maintained a neutral stance on women’s suffrage. President Bowlker remarked, “If the suffrage shall eventually come […] the League will have proved its usefulness in serving as the best possible means of educating people to vote intelligently. If the suffrage shall never come, we believe that the League will equally have proved its value in showing how great is the work that women can do, without the vote.”¹⁷

Mabel attended the Boston debut of Damaged Goods in December 1913 at the Tremont Theater, co-sponsored by the Women's Municipal League of Boston. Written by French playwright Eugène Brieux, the play begins: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I beg leave to inform you, on behalf of the author and of the management, that the object of this play is a study of the disease of syphilis in its bearing on marriage. It contains no scene to provoke scandal or arouse disgust, nor is there in it any obscene word; and it may be witnessed by everyone, unless we must believe that folly and ignorance are necessary conditions of female virtue." ⁵ Although the play portrays men as the agents of change, in New York and Boston, women's groups like the Municipal League of Boston promoted and funded the production to encourage women to take charge of their health.^8,9 

Later, as Chair of the Press Committee, in February 1914, Mabel arranged for reporters to personally witness the "bad cellars and basements" where impoverished families were "forced to live without air or light." ⁶ With headlines like "Cleaning the Cellar of Boston," ⁷ "Horrors of 'Cave Dwelling,'" ¹⁰ and "Hundreds Live Underground," ¹¹ Boston newspapers printed multiple articles describing the deplorable conditions and the need for housing reform. As a result, new laws came before the State legislature. Mabel seems to have found her calling. Combining her roles in the Press Committee and the Housing Committee, her work to enhance public health and housing conditions would outshine her earlier anti-suffragist stance. 

Mabel wrote, "A delicate adjustment of property and human rights rests upon the administration of laws concerning our homes and we believe that Boston must fall into step with the best legislation of the country in deciding that the line of restrictive legislation in housing must be drawn sharply at the point where bad housing profitable to the owner creates a by-product which becomes a liability to the State'" ²² Mabel increasingly advocated for laws to correct the "by-products" of unsanitary housing conditions: rats, flies and disease.

Mabel's transition from an anti-suffragist to a voter is a fascinating and mysterious part of her story. Her decision to register to vote on the last day of the Seventh National Conference on Housing in 1918 marked a pivotal shift in her stance. Mabel may have needed the vote to support her social reform goals. One year after the Conference, she assumed leadership of the Municipal League Housing Committee and co-founded the Boston Housing Association, marking a new chapter in her advocacy work.^16,22

On May 28, 1920, The Boston Globe listed Mabel as a candidate for Director at Large for the Massachusetts League of Woman Voters (LWV).¹² However, of the nine candidates listed, only three - all prominent suffragists - were included in the final slate and elected on May 28. Although early available Massachusetts and Boston LWV meeting minutes do not mention Mabel specifically, the Municipal League and League of Women Voters collaborated on multiple public health initiatives, including smoke abatement and waste disposal, through the 1920s and 1930s.^13,22

Closer to home, in 1909, Mabel and her neighbors discussed plans to plant trees along their sidewalks. By 1910, the project expanded to a municipal campaign, with Mabel as fundraising chair, to plant 300 trees along Beacon Street from Arlington Street to Massachusetts Avenue. Landscape architect Arthur A. Shurtleff, husband of Margaret Nichols Shurtleff (MIT Class of 1902), oversaw the project. Although few Little-leaf Lindens remain from the original planting, hundreds of trees shade Beacon Street sidewalks today.^2,14,18

Mabel's influence extended beyond her social and civic work. She took an active part in the MIT Alumni community. She attended the 1912 banquet when President Mclaurin formally announced MIT's move to Cambridge. Her role on the Technology Women's Executive Committee during World War I with Mabel Keyes Babcock 1908 S.B., 1909 S.M. Architecture, and her MIT Woman's Association (MITWA) presidency from 1932 to 1934 contributed to her enduring legacy within the MIT community, earning her the respect of her peers.^4,20,21

1. “305 Beacon.” Back Bay Houses, 7 July 2013. https://backbayhouses.org/305-beacon/. Accessed 2 July 2024.
2. Andersen, Phyllis. “‘Full Foliage and Fine Growth’: An Overview of Street-Tree Planting in Boston.” Arnoldia, vol. 48, no. 4, Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, pp. 32–36, doi:10.2307/42954327. Accessed 9 July 2024.
3. “Antis Secure Half the Seats.” The Boston Globe, 24 Feb. 1910.
4. “Association of MIT Alumnae (AMITA) | MIT Alumni Association.” MIT Alumni Online Community. https://alumcommunity.mit.edu/topics/21811/page/past-presidents. Accessed 2 July 2024.
5. Brieux, Eugène. “Damaged Goods (Les Avariés) a Play in Three Acts. Preface by G. Bernard Shaw.” HathiTrust Digital Library, translated by John Pollock, Bretano’s, 1912. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t74t6t394?urlappend=%3Bseq=14. Accessed 9 July 2024.
6. “Bulletin v.5 (Nov. 1913 - May 1914).” HathiTrust Digital Library, The Women’s Municipal League of Boston, 1914. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101017506039&seq=152. Accessed 2 July 2024.
7. “Cleaning the Cellar of Boston.” Boston Transcript, 21 Feb. 1914.
8. Corts, Alice. “Syphilis Onstage: Eugène Brieux’s Damaged Goods.” NOTCHES, 21 July 2016. https://notchesblog.com/2016/07/21/syphilis-onstage-eugene-brieuxs-damaged-goods/. Accessed 9 July 2024.
9. “Hails ‘Damaged Goods’ Drama.” The Boston Globe, 2 Dec. 1913.
10. “Hits Cellar Bedrooms ... Horrors of ‘Cave Dwelling’ Told by Agents.” Boston Transcript, 19 Mar. 1914.
11. “Hundreds Live Underground.” The Boston Globe, 22 Feb. 1914.
12. “League of Women Voters.” The Boston Globe, 28 May 1920.
13. League of Women Voters of Massachusetts Additional Records, 1918-2001; MC#631, Box 1, Folder 6. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
14. “Letter To the Residents of Beacon Street.” Boston Athenæum Digital Collections, 1910, https://cdm.bostonathenaeum.org/digital/collection/p16057coll37/id/1383/rec/3. Accessed 16 July 2024.
15. “Letters to the Editor: Mixing Politics with Religion.” Boston Evening Transcript, 23 May 1912.
16. “Massachusetts, City of Boston Voter Registers, 1857-1920. Entry for Mabel D Lord, 1918.” FamilySearch.Org, 10 Mar. 2024, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Z6FQ-7L3Z. Accessed 17 July 2024.
17. Sankovitch, Nina. “When the Lowell Women Broke the Boston Brahmin Rules.” The History Reader, 25 Apr. 2017, https://www.thehistoryreader.com/us-history/boston_municipal_league/. Accessed 2 July 2024.
18. “Shade Trees for Beacon Street.” The Boston Globe, 11 May 1910.
19. Survey of women, completed forms, 1916, Box: 3, Folder: 42; DigitalStorage: 2023_016RR_001. Association of MIT Alumnae Records, MC-0065. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Libraries. Department of Distinctive Collections. https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/163123. Accessed 9 Jul 2024.
20. “Technology Graduates Cheer New Site.” The Boston Globe, 4 Jan. 1912.
21. Women Caring For Needs of M.I.T. Men in War Confer. 17 Oct. 1917.
22. Worrell, Dorothy. “The Women’s Municipal League of Boston, a History of Thirty-Five Years of Civic Endeavor.” HathiTrust Digital Library, Women’s Municipal League Committees, inc., 1943, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.32000007033907. Accessed 2 July 2024.