A WOMAN AND A HEROINE.

Southland Times, Issue 600, 5 December 1866, Page 3

A WOMAN AND A HEROINE.

(From the New York Jonrnal) Most of our city readers may have heard of Mrs Dr Mary E. Walker, who wu arrested far attracting crowds by her strange attire ; our out-of-town subscribers may be interested in a more detailed account. She appeared, laat week, before the Police Commissioners against officer Pickett, who arrested her in the street. Mrs Walker, who is an active woman, and may have seen thirty summers, was dressed in black broadcloth, her coat, from the shoulder to the waist, closely resembling a woman's ordinary attire ; but from the waist downward, the cut of both coat and pantaloons is masculine. Her hat is the merest chip of straw trimmed as the milliners usually trim that indescribable article of dress. Her dainty parasol, her bijouterie, indeed everything but the ample pantaloons, and coat, terminating at the knees, betokening the moderately fashionable woman. The substance of Mrs Dr "Walker's charge against Policeman Pickett is that he arrested her for wearing male attire. Her testimony was as follows : — " I dwell at TN"o 13 Laight Street, and am a practising physician and surgeon ; I graduated as such in 1855, and as such have been in both civil and military service ; I have worn this style of dress for many years, as many female medical students and practitioners haye done ; I have been respectfully entertained at the mansions of gentlemen of distinction in every walk of industry or of art and science, and among the number 1 mention the chief jurist of the land and the President of the United States, and it haa been reserved for a Metropolitan policeman, whose province it is to protect all lawabiding citizens, to be the first to offer me indignity. I wear this dress from high moral principle ; the fashionable dress of the day is not such as any physiologist can defend, . nor any economist wear ; it sweeps the filth from your side-walks ; it fastens the lungs as within a coflin, and encased within its iron bands no woman can venture out in a high wind, or attempt to climb a staircase, without immodest exposure of the limbs ; it is an abomination, invented by the prostitutes of Paris, and, as such, unfit to be worn by a modest American woman. Between five and six o'clock, p.m., on the sth instant, I entered a millinery store, in Canal Street, and a gaping crowd gathered at tne door ; the lady of the shop invited me to stay until the unmannerly multitude had gone ; presently a policeman approached me in the store, and took me to the Wooster Street Police Station, and there the serjeant in command, after keeping me standing at his desk until he had disposed of a female who had been arrested for crime, demanded my name, and inquired whether I could read and write. Regarding the Serjeant's queries as impertinent, I told him to find my name on this medal, exhibiting the medal of ' Congress to Major Mary E. Walker.' After considerable argument on both, sides President Acton dismissed the complaint, saying : — " This lady was taken to the Station House to get her away from the mob, and, in making the arrest for such cause the officer was not guilty of wrong, because he did not know her abode, and could not take her there, but if the arrest had been made because of her peculiar attire, he would have been in error. The police have no more right to apprehend a woman in such a dress as her's than they have to arrest me." To Officer Pickett—" Let her go : she is smart enough to take care of herself: never arrest her again." Mrs Walker departed under a storm of applause.