Sabin, Pauline Morton (1887–1955)

American political reformer. Name variations: Pauline Smith; Mrs. Charles H. Sabin. Born Pauline Morton in Chicago, Illinois, on April 23, 1887; died of bronchopneumonia on December 27, 1955, in Washington, D.C.; younger of two daughters of Paul Morton (a railroad executive and later president of the Equitable Life Assurance Society whose brother founded Morton Salt) and Charlotte (Goodridge) Morton; granddaughter of J. Sterling Morton (U.S. secretary of agriculture); educated in private schools and abroad; married James Hopkins Smith, Jr., on February 2, 1907 (divorced); married Charles Hamilton Sabin (president of Guaranty Trust Company of New York), on December 28, 1916 (died 1933); married Dwight F. Davis (former U.S. secretary of war, governor-general of the Philippines, and donor of the Davis Cup tennis trophy), on May 9, 1936; children: (first marriage) Paul Morton Smith (1908–1956); James Hopkins Smith (b. 1909), who became assistant secretary for the navy.

Pauline Morton Sabin was considered the "mother" of prohibition reform in America. In 1929, after observing nine years of lawlessness, bootlegging and gangster rule, she threw herself into the fight to repeal the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Though a lifelong Republican, Sabin put principles above party and in 1932 supported Franklin D. Roosevelt for the presidency, because he came out for repeal. Sabin had been a member of the Republican Committee of Suffolk County, New York (1919); a member of the Republican State Executive Committee of New York (1920); president of the Women's National Republican Club (1921); delegate to the Republican National Convention (1924); and a member of the Republican National Committee. She resigned from the committee in 1929 to organize the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform, of which she was made national chair. After winning her fight against prohibition in 1933, Sabin pushed just as energetically for political reforms in New York City.