Granville Pearl Aikman

Granville Pearl Aikman (December 26, 1858 – September 29, 1923) was an American attorney and judge who was a Judge of the 13th District Court of Kansas from 1900 until 1913. During his time on the bench, he presided over many cases involving railroad and oil companies, and issued several historically first injunctions and decisions. A supporter of women's suffrage, he appointed the first female bailiff in the history of the United States,

Early life Aikman was born in 1858 in London, Kentucky. Aikman began attending the schools of Butler County and eventually befriended William Allen White. He was admitted to the bar association of Kansas in 1881; the following year he began practicing law in El Dorado, Kansas, and joined the Freemasons, the Knights of Pythias, and the Modern Woodmen. in which the State of Kansas sought to revoke the charter of the railroad company, accusing them of conspiring with competing railroads to fix prices, working with Standard Oil to fix oil prices in Kansas, and cooperating with Chicago and Kansas City meat packers to regulate prices of meat and freight costs.

Aikman was the first judge in Kansas to hold that the Old Soldiers Preference Law (a state law giving preferential hiring treatment to former soldiers in public jobs) was constitutional, with the Kansas State Supreme Court later affirming. and sentenced him to life imprisonment. In total, he presided over 12 murder trials, some of national notoriety, and was only reversed upon appeal once (his original decision was later sustained by the State Supreme Court).

In 1907, Aikman presided over a case involving the kidnapping of the "St. Louis World's Fair Incubator Baby", which received national coverage.

Aikman was a strong supporter of women's suffrage. He wrote and presented the first resolution endorsing it in Kansas at a Republican State Convention, doing so against the recommendations of many leading Republicans (who opposed the measure and claimed it would ruin him politically); he presented the measure anyway, a vote was called, and it ultimately carried. He died on September 29, 1923.