The Gazette 1913-14

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JANUARY, 1914] The Gazette of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland. 75
Commissioner to Administer Oaths.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR has appointed the
following to be a Commissioner to adminster
Oaths :—
Thomas O'B. Kelly, Solicitor, Limerick.
Court'of Appeal (England).
(Before Cozens-Hardy, M. winfen Eacly
and Phillimore, )
BEBB v. THE LAW IETY.
1913, Dec. 9, 10.—Solicitors—Women—
Admission.
A WOMAN is at common law under a dis
ability which prevents her from being an
attorney or solicitor, and this disability has
not been removed by legislation.
Decision of Joyce, J. (see GAZETTE of
August, 1913, j). 37) affirmed.
The action was brought by Miss Gwyneth
Marjorie Bebb asking for a declaration that
she was a " person " within the meaning of
the Solicitors Act, 1843, and the amending
Acts, and a mandamus to compel the Law
Society to admit her to the Preliminary
Examinations held by the Law Society under
such Acts, with a view to her becoming a
solicitor.
Mr. Justice Joyce held that women were
disqualified by reason of their sex from acting
as solicitors. Before modern legislation a
woman had been disqualified by sex from i
becoming or practising as attorney, and there
was nothing in modern legislation showing an
intention to remove that disability. He
therefore dismissed the action.
The plaintiff appealed.
The Master of the Rolls in his judgment
said that the plaintiff asked for a mandamus
or an order in the nature of a manAamus
requiring the Law Society to admit her to
the preliminary examination. The Law
Society was a modern creation of statute, and
the right which the plaintiff claimed against
the Society depended on the Solicitors Act,
1843. The argument which had been
adduced was that reading the Act from
beginning to end it would be found that
certain obligations were imposed on the Law
Society requiring them to admit any person
who came before the Society and complied
with certain conditions ; and the plaintiff
said that if Section 48 were examined it
would appear that " every word importing
the masculine gender only shall extend and
be applied to a female as well as a male . . .
unless ... it be otherwise specially provided
or there be something in the subject or
context repugnant to such construction."
It was not really contended by Counsel for
appellant that there was anything in the Act
of 1843 which destroyed or removed any
existing disability, and his Lordship said
that, in his opinion, all that the Court had to
consider was whether at the date of the Act
women were under a disability to become
attorneys or solicitors.
Three grounds were alleged as proving
disability. First, it was said that Lord Coke,
in language which, his Lordship said, seemed
to him not to be so doubtful as was suggested
by counsel for the appellant, had laid it down
three hundred years ago that a woman was
not allowed to be an attorney (Co. Litt.,
p. 128a). The Court had been told that it
ought not to pay much attention to that,
because Lord Coke referred in that connection
to the Mirror of Justice with the words,
" Now what manner of men attorneys ought
to be, or rather what they ought not to be,
hear what antiquity hath said." Lord Coke
was speaking of attorneys not in the old sense
in which the word would be used, but of
attorneys as a professional body regulated
by statute and recognised and created by
statute between four and five hundred years
ago. It might be that the Mirror of Justice
was not a work of the-highest authority, but
the reference to it did not in the least take
away from the value of Lord Coke's opinion.
An opinion of his as to what was the Common
Law required no sanction from anybody else.
That alone, therefore, was evidence of what
the Common Law was, and at Common Law
women were under a disability which
prevented their being attorneys Apart from
this opinion of Lord Coke there was the fact
that no woman had ever been an attorney.
There had been a long, uniform and uninter
rupted usage. Such usage was the foundation
of the greater part of the Common Law, and
the Court ought to be very loth to depart
from anything supported by long usage.
Although, therefore, there had been a most
interesting discussion as to what was or was