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GAZETTE
SEPTEMBER 1990
called to the Bar at the Inner
Temple, in November 1922. In
England the first woman to take silk
was (Dame) Rose Heilbron in 1940
and in Scotland (Dame) Margaret
Kidd in 1948*. In Northern Ireland
no woman took silk until 1989
(Miss Eilish McDermott).
Finally, let us pay tribute to the
pioneering women lawyers in the
United States. A learned friend in
Philadelphia has kindly supplied me
with a list of the first women
lawyers in each of the individual
states. Iowa, perhaps surprisingly,
led the way.
Mrs. Arabella Mansfield, who
had been born on May 23, 1846,
had begun her study of the law by
"reading" in a law office in Mt.
Pleasant, Iowa. In June 1869 she
was admitted to the Iowa State bar.
In 1881 she moved to DePaul
University in Indiana, where her
husband had been appointed
Professor of Chemistry. Until her
death in 1911 she served there in
various capacities, as Dean of
Women and Professor of History.
Mansfield Hall in the university is
named after her.
Other states were not slow to
follow Iowa. A lady named Lemma
Barkaloo was admitted in Missouri
in 1870, followed by eleven more
states in the eighteen-seventies
and nine in the eighteen-eighties.
Alaska brought up the rear, Mildred
Herman having been admitted
there in 1950.
By 1893 there were enough
women lawyers in the States to
hold aCongress in Chicago, during
the World's Fair. Some controversy
had arisen over the claim of
Arabella Mansfield to be the first
woman lawyer in the whole of the
United States, and the Congress
appointed a committee to investi-
gate the dispute. The committee
duly awarded the title to Mrs.
Mansfield but noted that' a lady
named Ada Kepley had been the
first woman in the States to be
graduated from a law school when
she earned her degree in 1870 from
Union College in Chicago. Mrs.
Mansfield, as we saw, had not
attended a law school when she
was studying law.
Mrs. Mansfield had been born
Arabella Babb. She had met a
friendlier reception from the law
then her near namesake MissBebb,
the lady from Oxford who had been
rebuffed by the Court of Appeal. An
article about Mrs. Mansfield in
The
lowan Magazine
of Summer 1967
notes that the judge who presided
over the official proceedings
admitting Mrs. Mansfield to
practise had interpreted the statue
reading "any white male person"
and another section which allowed
"words importing the masculine
gender only" to be extended to
females quite liberally for his
generation.
As a fitting coda to this account
of feminine achievement, one
might quote from a report on the
legal profesion in
The Times
of 13
March 1990 according to which
"approximately one-third of those
called to the Bar, and over half of
admitted solicitors, are women".
•
*Editor's Note: Later QC and for
many years a distinguished editor
of the
Scots Law Times.
* Henry G. Button lives in Cambridge,
England, where he is Secretary of The Old
Members' Club of his College. He is an
author, a great letter writer and a part-time
tour guide.
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