Museum of Baltimore Legal History

11/13/2025

We are deeply saddened by the news of the devastating fire at the historic and iconic “Castle on Keswick” at 3355 Keswick Rd., Baltimore, MD 21211. Built in 1899, this Victorian/French-Renaissance landmark once housed Baltimore’s Northern Police District and now serves as home to several small businesses.

Our hearts break for all those impacted — especially the staff, clients, and community of the Community Law Center who have called the building home for over a decade, and for the many local entrepreneurs and longtime neighborhood residents who have cherished this beautiful building.

Please join us in standing with the Community Law Center and other businesses affected by this event. We’ll share any volunteer opportunities as they become available.

👉 Learn more about the Castle on Keswick’s history in this informative video from Baltimore Heritage:

Join us today in front of the ornate old Northern District Police Station. You may know it as 3355 Keswick Rd, or the Castle on Keswick, or the building that...

10/14/2025

New Donation to the Museum of Baltimore Legal History! ⚖️

A heartfelt thank-you to Henry L. Belsky, Esq. and his son, Michael J. Belsky of Schlachman, Belsky, Weiner & Davey, P.A., for their generous donation of a Directory of Baltimore Lawyers from 1948 — the 27th edition, produced and distributed by the Maryland Trust Company.

This little gem was designed to slip right into your pocket — measuring just 2.75 inches by 4.25 inches — yet somehow fit the entire Baltimore legal world into its 214 pages. Inside, you’ll find:

Every practicing attorney in Baltimore City, listed by name and address

State and federal judges, organized by court

Elected officials from Congress to the General Assembly and Governor’s Office

City and state boards, commissions, and agencies

A touching “In Memoriam” page

A schedule of court filing fees

And, to help you get to court, even the bus and streetcar route numbers!

It’s a wonderful reminder of a time when Baltimore lawyers could literally carry their professional world in their coat pocket.

Our sincere thanks again to Henry and Michael Belsky for helping preserve this piece of Baltimore’s legal heritage for future generations.

Come see it in person at the Museum of Baltimore Legal History, located inside the Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. Courthouse.

10/06/2025

A Landmark in Legal Reporting: Plowden’s Commentaries (1761) joins the Museum of Baltimore Legal History Collection.

The Baltimore Courthouse & Law Museum Foundation, Inc. is proud to announce the acquisition of Plowden’s Commentaries, a rare and influential legal volume published in 1761. This exceptional work was generously donated by Gary Duvall (Georgetown Law Center, J.D. 1974), a retired partner at Miles & Stockbridge, where he also served as Deputy General Counsel.

The Foundation extends its deepest gratitude to Mr. Duvall for this contribution. His gift ensures that visitors to the Museum of Baltimore Legal History will have the opportunity to encounter one of the foundational texts of the common law tradition and to engage directly with a tangible piece of legal history.

About Plowden’s Commentaries
Sir Edmund Plowden (1518–1585) was a distinguished English lawyer and scholar of the Elizabethan era. His Commentaries, first published between 1571 and 1579, transformed the recording and study of legal cases and laid the groundwork for modern case reporting.

Before Plowden, legal precedent was preserved primarily in “year books,” which recorded the spoken words of judges in court. These year books rarely included a clear statement of the facts or a structured legal analysis. Instead, they often contained extra-judicial commentary, including the personal views of practitioners and reporters themselves. The earliest identifiable year book dates to 1268, and while they remained in circulation for nearly three centuries, their discontinuation in the 16th century created the need for more systematic and authoritative reporting.

Plowden’s Commentaries met that need. They may be regarded as the first truly modern reports, offering not only a faithful record of judicial reasoning but also a detailed account of the facts of each case. Plowden also introduced the innovation of the headnote. The Commentaries were originally published in Anglo-Norman, the language used in English courts. The 1761 edition of the Commentaries was translated into English, making the work accessible to a wider audience, including lawyers in colonial America such as George Wythe and John Adams. The copy now preserved at the Museum embodies this pivotal shift in legal scholarship, bridging the medieval tradition of the year books with the structured reports that define common law practice today.

Plowden’s Commentaries is now on display at the Museum of Baltimore Legal History, located on the second floor of the Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. Courthouse. The Museum is open to the public from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. on weekdays, whenever volunteers are available.

10/02/2024

You can now get a glimpse of the wonders of the Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. Courthouse online! We teamed up with Baltimore Heritage to produce another "Five Minute History" video

You may not think of it, but beyond its wonderfully ornate courtrooms, the Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. Courthouse is also home to some of the best art in the s...

05/23/2024

Thank you to everyone who joined us last week to honor Judge Schneider and keep his memory alive through the Museum

On May 15th, The Baltimore Courthouse and Law Museum Foundation, Inc., The Historical Committee of the Bar Association of Baltimore City, and The Library Company of the Baltimore Bar co-hosted a Dedication of The Honorable James F. Schneider Museum of Baltimore Legal History. Remarks were given by Edward C. Papenfuse, Jr. (former Director, Maryland State Archives), Chief Judge Audrey Carrion, Courthouse Foundation President Alicia Gipe, and BABC Historical Committee Chair Derek Van De Walle. Also recognized were the docents who volunteer their time to keep the Museum open.

05/17/2024

The Museum of Baltimore Legal History is now featured online! We teamed up with Baltimore Heritage to produce a "Five Minute History" video on the Museum.

Join us today outside AND inside in the Mitchell Courthouse. We’ll learn about the history of the building, named after Civil Rights activist, Clarence M. Mi...

03/29/2024

Nicknamed “The Fearless One,” Lena King Lee was an educator and attorney who entered politics later in life. The daughter of a coal miner, King was born in Alabama in 1906. King attended public school in Alabama, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, eventually graduating third in her class.

Lee received a scholarship to Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, where she trained as a teacher. In 1927, she took her first teaching job in Annapolis, Maryland, and four years later moved to Baltimore to teach in public schools. Lee continued her own education, and in 1939, earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Morgan State University. In 1952, she became the third Black woman to receive a law degree from the University of Maryland School of Law, and was admitted to the Maryland Bar one year later.

Lee practiced law, focusing mostly on domestic cases, while serving as principal of Henry H. Garnett Elementary School from 1947 to 1964. In the 1950s, Lee was appointed to the Baltimore Housing and Urban Renewal Commission, where she fought for affordable housing for the City’s Black community. Later she served on the Maryland Advisory Council for Higher Education as an appointee of Governor J. Millard Tawes.

At age 60, Lee became one of the first Black women elected to the Maryland General Assembly where she represent Baltimore’s then-4th legislative district. Lee served in the House of Delegates until 1982, where she advocated for teachers’, women’s and children’s rights, attacked “bad bills,” saved the historic Orchard Street Church from demolition, helped get Morgan State University accredited. In 1970, Lee founded the Maryland Legislative Black Caucus.

03/22/2024

This week’s highlight is about Jeannette Rosner Wolman, the first woman admitted to the Bar Association of Baltimore City, and a founder of the Women’s Bar Association.

Born in New York City in 1902, Jeannette Rosner Wolman developed an aspiration to enter the practice of law while growing up in Birmingham, Alabama. While in high school, Wolman wrote to the dean of the Columbia University Law School in New York seeking admission to the school. The dean replied through a letter: “Columbia does not admit women to its law school. If youʼre interested in going to college, apply at Barnard.”

Wolman later moved to Baltimore and enrolled at Goucher College to study social work, but did not give up her legal aspirations. In 1921, Wolman enrolled at the University of Maryland Law School , where she was just one of three members of the class. She took classes at night and, during the day, worked as a social worker for the Jewish Childrenʼs Bureau. Wolman graduated in 1924, passed the bar, and became one of the few women practicing law in Baltimore at the time.

Although Wolman was actively practicing law, she was denied membership to the Bar Association of Baltimore City because the organization did not admit women at the time. Undeterred, Wolman and six other women lawyers founded the Women’s Lawyer Association of Maryland, in 1927, which later became the Womenʼs Bar Association. Wolman would eventually be admitted to the BABC thirty years later in 1957.

In 1965, Governor J. Millard Tawes appointed Wolman as the first chair of the Maryland Commission on the Status of Women. In 1985, Wolman was inducted into the Baltimore Women’s Hall of Fame, and the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame a year later. Wolman retired from practice in 1989, and in 1991 was presented with the American Bar Association’s Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award.

Wolman kept the dean of Columbia Law Schoolʼs rejection letter. Throughout her nearly seventy-years of practice, Wolman would show the letter to young women lawyers to remind them how times had changed.

03/15/2024

Today, we’re honoring Maryland’s first African American woman judge.

Mabel E. Houze Hubbard was born in Detroit and raised in Mt. Clemens, Michigan. In 1958, she graduated from University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She later taught English and worked as a vice principal and social worker in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia public schools.

In 1964, she married Robert Hubbard and the couple moved to Baltimore in 1970, where Judge Hubbard continued to teach English now at Walbrook Senior High School. She eventually left teaching to raise their two sons.

While raising her children, Judge Hubbard decided to attend law school. Ever the educator, when asked why she enrolled in law school, she said “I was interested in learning for learning’s sake.” It wasn’t long after passing the Bar that she entered public service, for in 1975, she became the first woman appointed to be a master in Baltimore City’s Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, a position she held until her appointment to the District Court.

In 1981, Judge Hubbard was appointed to the District Court of Maryland, for Baltimore City, and four years later in 1986 she was elevated to the Circuit Court. Of her 22-year career in law, 18 were served on the bench.

Judge Hubbard encouraged many young African-American women to pursue legal careers, and said it was her “duty to open doors of opportunity to African-American women.” Over the course of her tenure on the Circuit Court, Judge Hubbard hired a dozen African-American women as her law clerks and helped them build their careers.

03/08/2024

In honor of Women’s History Month, the Museum of Baltimore Legal History will be highlighting a woman from Baltimore's legal history each week for the month of March. Our first spotlight is Etta Maddox, Maryland's first woman lawyer.

Henrietta (Etta) Haynie Maddox was born in Baltimore and graduated from Eastern Female High School in 1873. For the next three years, Maddox studied voice at the Peabody Institute and, thereafter, continued to study as well as perform as a vocalist in the middle Atlantic region.

Maddox later changed career paths and, on June 6, 1901, became the first woman to graduate from the Baltimore Law School. At the time, Maryland law permitted only men to practice law in the State. That did not stop Maddox from applying to the Court of Appeals for permission to take the bar exam on October 28, 1901. That same year, the Court of Appeals denied Maddox’s application, reasoning that only the General Assembly had the power to amend the statute (see In re Maddox 93 Md. 727 (1901)).

Supported by women lawyers from other states, Maddox took her case to the General Assembly where they were successful in changing the law. On April 8, 1902, the Governor signed Chapter 399 Section 3A into law, which reads: “Women shall be permitted to practice law in this State upon the same terms, conditions, and requirements, and to the same extent as provided in this Article with reference to men. No discrimination shall be made on account of race, creed, complexion or previous condition of servitude.”

On June 18 and 19 1902, Maddox took the bar exam and was notified in July that she passed the exam “very creditably.” Maddox was formally admitted to the bar on September 11, 1902. She argued her first case in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City on December 14, 1904, where she successfully secured her client $3.50 a week in alimony and a $15 counsel fee.

Maddox died on February 19, 1933.You can visit her burial site in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore. Maddox continued to practice law until her death, and was active in the women’s suffrage movement.

11/03/2023

We had some questions about the relief sculpture in front of the Orphans’ Court bench. The relief depicts Themis and was used for the 200th anniversary of the Maryland Court of Appeals (now the Supreme Court of Maryland). In Greek mythology, Themis is the personification of justice and the law. More commonly known as “Lady Justice,” Themis is often depicted holding scales and carrying a sword.

03/03/2023

On this date, in 1879, Belva Lockwood became the first women admitted to The United States Supreme Court.

In 1871, 15 women, including Lockwood, enrolled at the National University Law School (now part of George Washington University) in Washington, D.C. The following year, Lockwood and another woman completed the program, after which law school administrators told them they would not receive diplomas. Lockwood appealed to President Ulysses S. Grant, who was chancellor ex officio of the National University, and she received her diploma one week later.

Albert G. Riddle, a Washington lawyer, moved Belva Lockwood for admission to the Supreme Court Bar in October 1876. The Court rejected Lockwood’s application. When Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite denied the motion, he announced that “none but men are admitted to practice before [the Court] as attorneys and counsellors . . .”

This legal setback prompted Lockwood to garner support from male attorneys and members of Congress for the creation of legislation that would allow qualified women to be admitted to the Supreme Court Bar. A bill titled “An act to relieve certain legal disabilities of women” was debated several times in both the House of Representatives and the Senate in 1878 and 1879 and was eventually enacted. Popularly known as the “Lockwood Bill,” President Rutherford B. Hayes signed it into law. On March 3, 1879, Riddle again moved Lockwood’s admission to the Supreme Court Bar, and the Court admitted her.