Chicago Women's Club

The Chicago Women’s Club began in the mid-1880s with some 500 members, led by President Dr. Sarah Haskell Stevenson. They fought hard to improve municipal benefits, especially for women and children. As they felt these problems were being ignored, they took it upon themselves to investigate asylums, poorhouses, hospitals, and prisons. The Club worked hard for tough sentences for rapists, and after investigating the slums, they were able to get Chicago to build the City’s first public bath house. Jane Addams would join in 1889.¹

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1. Miller, Donald. City of the Century - The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. Pg. 416-17