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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
"Ladies in England and
Ireland had to await the
passing of the Sex
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
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
257