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Loise Foskette, Class of 1894
Louise Foskette was born in Palatine, Illinois in 1865. Before graduating from Chicago College of Law in 1890, a classmate of Ida Platt’s, Foskette spent eight years teaching in Chicago schools. She was admitted to the bar in June of 1894, and opened her own law practice in Chicago’s Ashland Block, but continued to teach night school. She received public attention when she won a not guilty verdict for a client against attorney James Todd, who became famous as the prosecutor of Chicago Mayor Carter H. Harrison’s assassin. In 1897, Foskette was forced to close her law office and move to Alabama, where the warmer climate was said to aid in overcoming consumption. Unfortunately, she passed away in March of 1897. The Chicago Legal News published a portion of her eulogy, which read “Measured in days and years, our friend’s existence was a brief one, but she lived while she lived...she possessed a mind of superior power and compass--a mind that urged her on far beyond the ability of her physique to sustain.”