Blackstone
SIR WILLIAM, an English jurist, born in London, July 10, 1723; educated at the Charter House and Pembroke College, Oxford. In 1743 he was elected fellow of All-Souls College, Oxford, and in 1746 was called to the bar; but, having attended the Westminster law courts for seven years without success, he retired to Oxford. Here he gave lectures on law, which suggested to Mr. Viner the idea of founding a professorship at Oxford for the study of the common law; and Blackstone was, in 1758, chosen the first Vinerian Professor. In 1759 he published a new edition of the "Great Charter and Charter of the Forest"; and, during the same year, resumed his attendance at Westminster Hall with abundant success. In 1761 he was elected M. P. for Hindon, General to the Queen. He was also appointed Principal of New Inn Hall; which office, with the Vinerian Professorship, he soon resigned. In 1765 he published the first volume of his famous "Com SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE A black sheep: a disgrace to the mentaries on the Laws of England." It was long the principal text-book English law. He died Feb. 14, 1780.
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Blackstone, Sir William
Sir William (1723-1780), an English jurist. He was born in London and was educated at a London school called Charterhouse, at Oxford University, and later for the law. In 1758 he began a series of lectures at Oxford on English law. He divided his comments into four books on the rights of persons, the rights of things, public wrongs, and private wrongs. Published in book form these lectures are known as Blackstone's Commentaries and are frequently, if not universally, the first law book placed in the hands of a law student. Blackstone is criticized for being too much of an essayist and not enough of a lawyer; for not distinguishing clearly between legal and popular uses of a word; for falling into contradiction; and for setting up a literary defense of English law as a perfect and perfected body of law, instead of a crude, growing code full of injustice as well as of admirable provisions. Lawyers regard Blackstone rather as an essayist,--a Lord Macaulay turned loose in a law school. 2026 Editor's Note: Blackstone's Commentaries did even more in America than in England — they were the law library of the frontier and of the Founders, and the Supreme Court still quotes them. One sentence became a pillar of criminal justice everywhere: "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." (Ed: BR 2026-06-30)
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Blackwell
a city of Oklahoma, in Kay co. It is on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, and the Frisco Line railroads, and the Shicaska river. There are parks, and several handsome public buildings. The town is the seat of the Oklahoma State College. The industries include clay, brick, glass works, and flour mills. Pop. (1910) 3,266; (1920) 7,174.
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Blackwell
MRS. ANTOINETTE LOUISA (BROWN), an American woman suffragist and Unitarian minister, born at Henrietta, N. Y., May 20, 1825. A graduate of Oberlin (1847), she "preached on her own orders," at first in Congregational churches, becoming at length a champion of women's rights. She married Samuel C., a brother of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (1856). She has written "Shadows of Our Social System" (1855); "The Island Neighbors" (1871), novel of American Life; "Sexes a Throughout Nature" (1875); "Sea Drift" (1903); "The Making of the Universe" (1914); "The Social Side of Mind and Action" (1915).
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Blackwell (II)
ELIZABETH, an American physician and and medical and ethical writer, born at Bristol, England, 1821. She is the first woman who ever obtained the degree of M. D. in the United States (1849), beginning practice in New York (1851). With her sister, Emily, she opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children (1854), organizing in connection with it the Women's Medical College (1867). In 1868 she became professor in a woman's medical college that she had assisted in organizing in London. She has written "Laws of Life" (1852); "Counsel to Parents on the Moral Education of Their Children" (1879); "Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women," etc. She died in London, 1910.
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Blackwell (LUCY STONE an American woman)
LUCY STONE, an American woman suffragist, born in West Brookfield, Mass., Aug. 13, 1818; was graduated at Oberlin College in 1847; became a lecturer on woman suffrage, and a contributor to the press. In 1855 she married Henry B. Blackwell, a merchant of Cincinnati. She died in Dorchester, Mass., Oct. 20, 1893. BLACKWELL'S ISLAND an island belonging to the city of New York, in the East river, containing about 120 acres. On it are the penitentiary, almshouse, lunatic asylum for females, workhouse, blind asylum, hospital for incurables, and a convalescent hospital. Nearly all of these buildings were erected from granite quarried on the island, and by convict labor. The island is bordered granite sea wall, also built by a heavy by the convicts.
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Blackwell, Anna
The most prominent disciple of Allen Kardec in this country, and the ablest exponent of his views. Miss Blackwell herself had psychic experiences-she had seen visions, and spirit forms had appeared on her photographs.
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Blackwood
or INDIAN ROSE- WOOD, a leguminous tree of Hindustan (dalbergia latifolia), the timber of which is highly valued and much used in the manufacture of fine furniture. The Australian blackwood is the acacia melanoxylon.
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Blackwood
WILLIAM, a Scotch publisher, born at Edinburgh, Nov. 20, 1776. He started as a bookseller in 1804, and soon became also a publisher. The first number of "Blackwood's Magazine" appeared April 1, 1817, and it has always been conducted in the Tory interest. He secured as contributors most of the leading Tory writers, among them Sir Walter Scott, Lockhart, Hogg, Professor Wilson, De Quincey, Dr. Moir (Delta), Dr. Maginn, John Galt, and others. The work of editor he performed himself. After his death the business, which had developed into a large publishing concern, was carried on by his sons, and the magazine still keeps its place among the leading periodicals. He died Sept. 16, 1834.
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Blackwood, William
William (1776-1834), an Edinburgh publisher. He was a bookseller from his youth up, and had experience in the trade, not only in his native city, but in Glasgow and London as well. He established Blackwood's Magazine in Edinburgh in 1817. It immediately took rank as a literary journal, corresponding in a way to our Atlantic Monthly. Among the earlier contributors who gave standing were John Wilson, J. G. Lockhart, De Quincey, and James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. Mr. Blackwood combined the literary taste and genial manners that attracted men of letters and made them loyal to his enterprise. He was a man of delightful hospitality. In this respect, he resembled our American publisher, James T. Fields, whose Boston home was the resort of authors and magazine writers. Mr. Blackwood was succeeded in business by his sons, who have built up one of the influential publishing houses of Great Britain . W. E. Aytoun succeeded the elder Blackwood in the editorship of the magazine. See Black ; Adam 2026 Editor's Note: Blackwood's ran for 163 years, until 1980 — one of the longest lives of any magazine in English. Its greatest coup came in 1899, when it serialized Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness , and its pages also carried George Eliot's first fiction. (Ed: BR 2026-06-12)
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