User:HelenLaw1a/sandbox

Helen "Nellie" Sampson Brooks passed the Massachusetts Bar in 1926 in Massachusetts Suffolk County, Boston, Massachusetts. While attending Law School, she was a Court Stenographer and Law Clerk. Law office of Helen "Nellie" Sampson: 14 Tremont Street, Boston, MA. Nellie passed State Bar in 1926, and she was her Class President of her female attorney law school class at Portia Law Scool now known as NESL New England School of Law. http://www.nesl.edu/ Nellie was born August 20,1886 in Seacombe, Cheshire, England, and died February 10, 1961 at home in Waltham, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States. She is buried in Newton Centre Cemetery, Newton, Massachusetts, along with her son, Arthur Garfield Brooks, Jr. (1915-1978), and her daughter Helen Rhoda Brooks Frazier (1913-1987). Nellie was one of 13 children who emigrated from Seacombe, England via Liverpool to Nova Scotia in 1890. Her father was Robert Sampson, and her mother Ellen FitzGerald. Robert became a storekeeper as well as a clergyman in Watertown, MA. Nellie studied for the ministry and was fluent in French as well according to her entrance papers for Law School. Circa 1918 in Boston, Nellie was a community activist distributing 'Beacon' magazine toward 19th Amendment in 1920 passage of full voting for women. At that time, Nellie lived at 41 Bartlett Crescent, Brookline, MA. Her daughter Helen recalled as a little girl with her attorney-mother handing out suffrage pamphlets on streetcar corners in Boston near the Tremont Street Law Office. In May 1921, Nellie was an Attorney-at-Law on the hugely publicized Sacco Vanzetti murder trial appearing before Judge Webster Thayer in Boston. Nellie was ahead of her time in representing female criminals pro bono, and travelled to various women's prisons in eastern Massachusetts from late 1920's until early 1950's. It was very new for a female criminal to have a female attorney who could visit them in prison or jail. Nellie kept her client's confidentiality, but did enjoy relating her travels and her need to keep a $50 bill pinned to the silk lining of her suitcase due to unintended additional night stays plus the poor travel arrangements of the day as she consistently acquired new clients in her prison travels. Helen Sampson Brooks was a lady lawyer ahead of her time indeed.