This reasoning was not legally unprecedented. It drew on a tradition of equity jurisprudence that looked to the actual conditions of parties to an agreement rather than to the formal expression of consent. Hayes applied this tradition to a situation where the formal expression of consent — if it existed at all — was produced by conditions that rendered it legally meaningless.
His finding that Smith intended to remove the group “without the free will and consent” of those persons was the operative legal conclusion. Combined with his reliance on California’s constitutional prohibition on slavery, it was sufficient to free Mason and the twelve others.
Three days of deliberation, then the ruling. January 22, 1856.
The people freed by the ruling walked out of Hayes’s chambers into the city of Los Angeles as legally free persons for the first time in their lives. Biddy Mason was thirty-seven years old. Her daughter Ellen was about seventeen, Ann about eleven, Harriet about eight. Hannah and her children were also freed. All of them faced the same question: what did freedom mean in practical terms, and how were they going to build a life with it?
## Working as a Free Woman: The Medical Practice
The practical dimensions of Biddy Mason’s post-emancipation life took shape through work. She was skilled, she was known in the community through the Owens family connection, and she had an ally in Judge Hayes who made the connection to Dr. John Strother Griffin. These three elements — skill, community connection, and professional introduction — gave her the foundation for an independent economic existence.