In the spring of 1883 a physician in Amsterdam read rather more carefully than most people ever do. It granted the vote to residents who paid a certain sum in tax. About men it said nothing at all. Aletta Jacobs paid her taxes, ran her own practice, and asked her city to enter her on the voters' register.
Amsterdam turned her down. So did the district court. In May of that same year the did too, arguing that the letter of the law may have been silent, yet its spirit plainly meant men.
Four years later the matter was settled for good, in the chambers around this courtyard. The constitutional revision of 1887 widened the franchise to anyone showing signs of prosperity and ability, and in the same breath it slipped one adjective into the text. From then on the voters were male residents. A door had been closed by writing in a word that was never there to begin with.
Jacobs spent the following three decades campaigning, and lived to see women vote in 1919, the year she turned sixty five.
Of all the changes made to the constitution in the nineteenth century, the one still argued about is a single adjective.
Sources. Story: Hoge Raad 18 mei 1883; artikel 80 Grondwet 1887. Parlement.com, Vrouwenkiesrecht; Tweede Kamer, toespraak 100 jaar kiesrecht (2018); Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
