Caroline G. Thummel

Caroline G. Thummel McCarthy (1873 – November 14, 1947) and Adelaide O'Brien were the only law partnership of women practicing in the Western United States in the 1910s.

Early life Thummel was born in 1873 in Phelps County, Missouri. The family moved to St. Louis, Missouri while she was an infant. Her father died while she was very young. Her mother Mary L. Gilliam, of Richmond, Virginia, and her father was Gerhardt von Thummel. She had one brother, William von Thummel, who was a civil engineer.

She taught school while attending Benton Law School for four years and was admitted to the bar in 1908. She was admitted to Federal practice in September 1910.

At the beginning of her career in 1911 she declared "I want to be a help to widows and orphans and women whose education prevents them fighting their own battles."

In an address before the Woman's State Bar Association, Thummel stated that "for persons who had committed crimes by destroying property, and those who had committed crimes against other persons, a similar sentence was unjust." It was her aim to establish as near as possible a law that was for the humane interest of human beings, and in 1912 she framed a "Humane Bill", which revoluzionized the Criminal Code and which she presented to the Legislature. Thummel based her bill on facts derived from close contact with the law, saying the law did not provide adequately for certain offenses. "According to the present criminal laws, crimes against persons and crimes against property are largely classed together, and are subject to the same punishment. Those who commit crimes against property can make restitution — money repaid and property restored. Crimes such as murder, assault and other crimes against the person can not be atoned for, and persons committing such crimes are so abnormal that they should be segregated and forever kept from repeating the offense. It is beyond the law to provide adequate remedy for personal injury or loss of life through crimes of another. When one man or corporation has a person punished by law for defrauding, or for deliberately stealing, they simply get revenge. The money or goods are not restored, and, so far as the man or corporation is concerned, he has gained nothing. It is claimed society is improved by the deterrent effect; but society can be improved only by improving the character of the individual. Incarceration has utterly failed to achieve the result. The effect of our criminal law upon the character of those who have paid the penalty is so exactly opposite from that designed by the law that ex-convicts are always under police espionage and are objects of suspicion immediately upon the commission of every new crime. There is no justice in the present penalties. Many guilty persons are freed through technicality. A certain man is serving a sentence for six months for stealing twenty-five cents, while another is serving the same sentence for stealing three thousand times as much. Each man should have been made to earn and repay exactly what he stole, with interest, and to pay the costs; then he should be allowed to go free. Present laws are more likely to make anarchists than anything else.

"Missouri must awaken to a stronger sense of duty if she would rank in the world as a State with correct laws."

"Prisoners are not considered as human and are treated one as badly as the other."

In October 1915, Thummel demanded to be examined for Head of Legal Aid Bureau, a position from which she was excluded due to the fact she was a woman. She lost her suit before Judge Jones who held that the Efficiency Board had the power, under the charter, to enforce rules and regulations governing examinations, so long as it acted within reason.

In 1936 she ran in the Democratic party primary for Prosecuting Attorney of Warren County, Missouri; she lost in the general election to Republican Alvin H. Juërgenmeyer, 1096 to 2801.

She was also an accomplished poet, with several books of poems published.