The Gazette 1990

GAZETTE

SEPTEMBER 1990

legislature had had men only in view when framing the Administra- tion of Justice Proclamation, "because it used the words 'him' and 'he' throughout". Miss Madeleine Wookey similarly failed to secure admission in Cape Province in 1912. Eleven years later the Women Legal Practitioners Act (7 of 1923) was passed. In 1926 a lady named Constance Mary Hall became the first woman to be admitted as an attorney in South Africa. (See DE REBUS of July 1989, pp.461-2). Three years earlier, in November 1923, Miss Mithan Tata became Disqualification Act of 1919 before the doors were opened to them." the first lady-advocate in Bombay. P.B. Vachha, in Famous Judges, Lawyers and Cases of Bombay, quotes an article from the Times of India which hailed her appointment and went on to remark that "the association of the fair sex with law and litigation began from times immemorial, going back to the period when Eris threw the apple of discord among the Olympian goddesses". Almost ten years later, on 24 March 1933, Miss Cecilia Clementina Ferreira became the first lady solicitor to be enrolled in the Bombay High Court. In Scotland, the first lady advocate - Miss (later Dame) Margaret Kidd* was admitted on 13 July 1923. After more than four hundred years the W.S. Society admitted its first lady member on 6 December 1976. (The Law Society of Scotland cannot say who was the first woman solicitor in Scotland, as their records do not go back far enough). Ladies in England and Ireland had to await the passing of the Sex Disqualification Act of 1919 before the doors were opened to them. In the following year Miss Helena Earley became the first lady solicitor in Ireland. On 1 November 1921 the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Sir Thomas Molony, called twenty students to the Irish Bar, and the first name on the roll was that of Miss Frances Kyle, the fifteenth was Miss Averill Deverell. Miss Frances Elizabeth Moranwas "Ladies in England and Ireland had to await the passing of the Sex

the first woman to take silk, on 9 May 1941. In 1922 a former student from Girton College, Cambridge, Miss Carrie (or Carol) Morrison became the first woman to be admitted as a solicitor in England. Harry Kirk refers to this development in Portrait of a Profession. He remarks that the Gazette made nomention of Miss Morrison's achievement. Miss Morrison had been born in 1888. She attended Manchester High School for Girls and was a student at Girton College, Cambridge, from 1907 to 1910. Her entry in Who Was Who shows that she was an articled clerk and Law Society student from 1920 to 1922 and among the first four women to pass the Law Society's final examination in 1922. She des- cribed herself as "Solicitor since 1922 - first woman admitted". Miss Morrison was not the first woman to address herself to the Law Society. An Oxford student from St. Hugh's College, Miss G.M. Bebb, now immortalised in Bebb - v-Law Society - [1914] 1 Ch. 286 - had notified the Society in December 1912 of her intention to present herself at the preliminary examination in February 1913, with a view to becoming a solicitor. She enclosed the usual fee. The Society returned the fee and told her that she would not be admitted to the examination. She thereupon brought an action against theLaw Society, claiming to be a "person" within themeaning of theSolicitors Act of 1843. Miss Bebb had studied law at Oxford. The 1911 class list for the examination "In Juriprudentis" shows Miss Bebb as the only woman in Class I, while there were no women in Classes II, III and IV. This, however, did not help her with Mr. Justice Joyce, who dismissed her action on July 2, 1913. The case then went to the Court of Appeal, where Lord Robert Cecil K.C. appeared for Miss Bebb and three K.C.s for the Society. The account of the case makes interesting reading nowadays. It was argued on behalf of Miss Bebb that women were allowed to serve as Queens, and were permitted to practise as solicitors "in many of our colonies". But the three judges were unswayed by such arguments. The Master of the Rolls (Cozens-Hardy) admitted that

the applicant was "a distinguished Oxford student", but Lord Coke had said 300 years ago that a woman was not allowed to be an attorney, and no woman ever had been an attorney. Swinfen-Eady, who was to succeed Cozens-Hardy as Master of the Rolls in 1918, said that the argument had entirely fail- ed to convince him that the pro- fession of a solicitor was open to women. W.G.F. Phillimore, who had just been made a Lord Justice of Appeal, agreed with the other two and said that the office of attorney "has never been, in the view of the Courts, suitable to women". For good measure he added that, if a woman was admitted and then married, difficulties could arise because married women were not free to enter into binding contracts, as solicitors sometimes had to do. In 1922, the year in which Miss Morrison had been admitted as a solicitor, three other Girtonians were among the first women to be called to the Bar in England, making 1922 an annus mirabiiis for the col- lege. Sybil Campbell, Naomi Wallace and May Wheeler were all called to the Bar at the Middle Temple on 17 November 1922. (Sybil Campbell later became the first woman Stipendiary Magis- trate). An Oxford don named Ivy Williams, by some tricky footwork, had stolen a march on the Cambridge ladies and had been called to the Bar, at the Inner Temple, in the summer of 1922, making her the first woman barrister in the country. Another Girtonian, Theodora Llewelyn Davies (later, Mrs. Calvert) was also TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS AND THE ISLE OF MAN Samuel McCleery Attorney - at - Law and Solicitor of PO Box 127 in Grand Turk.Turks and Caicos Islands, British West Indies and at 1 Castle Street, Castletown, Isle of Man will be pleased to accept instructions generally from Irish Solicitors in the formation and administration of Exempt Turks and Caicos Island Companies and Non - Resident Isle of Man Companies as well as Trust Administration G. T Office:-

Tel: 809 946 2818 Fax: 809 946 2819 I.O.M.Office:- Tel: 0624 822210 Telex : 628285 Samdan G Fax: 0624 823799

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