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GAZETTE
DECEMBER1978
WOMEN AND THE LAW
— A Historical Note
The President of the Law Society wrote in 1921 that
the admission of women to the solicitors' profession was a
development which "will be viewed with considerable
interest and curiosity"
1
. If the curiosity which existed half
a century ago has vanished recent issues of the
Gazette
testify that the interest has not.
Women in Ireland, as in Britain, were by common law
under a general disability by reason of their sex to become
lawyers
2
until the enactment in 1919 of the Sex
Disqualification (Removal) Act. This provided that a
person should not be disqualified by sex or marriage from
the exercise of any public function or from being
appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office or post,
or from entering or assuming or carrying on any civil
profession or vocation and that a person should not be
exempted by sex or marriage from the liability to serve as
a juror.
3
As the terms of the Act suggest, the admission of
women to the legal profession was but one part of a
general review of their legal position in society occurring
in the first part of the twentieth century, an issue brought
to a head by the social disruption caused by the First
World War.
Their exclusion from the profession led to litigation in
England against the Law Society in 1914,
4
but does not
appear to have given rise to controversy in Ireland. When
in October 1901 the Benchers of King's Inns refused an
application by a woman to become a student for the Bar
the Irish Law Times said that the Benchers "felt
themselves obliged to follow British Precedent".
9
A reader of the Irish Law Times would have known
that women could practise as lawyers in other countries,
since from time to time the paper reported that women
had been admitted to the Bar in some remote part of the
world, such as India or the western parts of the United
States. The matter came closer to home in 1909 when it
was reported that the Bar of Paris had passed a regulation
forbidding advocates to allow their photographs to be
published in newspapers or magazines; the previous year
photographs of lady advocates appeared in a Paris law
directory.
6
Although women could not practise as lawyers, many
women connected with the legal profession doubtless gave
assistance to their husbands or fathers, work which of its
nature is unrecorded. Women were entitled to appear in
court and plead for themselves in cases in which they are
concerned and some Irish women became well known for
this in the latter half of the nineteenth century, one being
described on the occasion of an appearance in the Land
Commission Court in Dublin in 1898 as "a well-known
lady litigant from Co. Monaghan, a familiar figure at
every Monaghan assizes for years past".
7
In the famous Yelverton case, in which the validity
of a marriage was litigated through Ireland, Scotland and
England for a number of years in the 1860s the
abandoned 'wife', Theresa Yelverton, argued her case in
person when the matter came before the House of Lords
on appeal in 1867. She "addressed their Lordships in a
firm clear voice, which became loud and impassioned
when she adverted to the unfortunate position in which
she was placed by the conflicting decisions that had geen
given upon her case . . . for seven long years had her
claims been bandied about in various courts in the three
kingdoms; they had been submitted to eighteen judges
and handled by nearly a hundred lawyers without any
unanimous decision being arrived at . . . "". Her appeal
was unsuccessful.
Later in the century a Miss Anthony, generally
regarded as a frivolous and vexatious litigant, frequently
appeared in person. Edward Carson claimed to have
helped to instill a taste for litigation in her,
9
and it was a
contemporary joke that not notice of her death would be
published by any newspapers for fear that she was not
dead but sleepeth only, and would arise and sue for libel.
One recorded appearance in court in 1880 was
unsuccessful:—
"An application to set aside the statement of
claim in the case of
Anthony v. Percival,
heard
before the Queen's Bench Division on the 20th inst.,
was resisted by Miss Anthony, the plaintiff, in
person. Fitzgerald J. said that the statement of
claim was incomprehensible. The lady might have a
very good cause of action, of which the court could
know nothing, because it was not set forth in a form
to make it intelligible. It was impossible for a lay
person to frame legal pleadings in a technical case
of this kind . . . O'Brien J. said that the statement of
claim was altogether unintelligible. It was very bad
economy for people to become their own
lawyers".
10
The effect of the 1919 Act was quickly seen even if for
some decades it was not dramatic. In January 1920,
within a month of its passing, the first two women
students for the Bar were admitted to the King's Inss, and
they were called to the Bar in Dublin in November
1921.
11
One of them, Miss Frances Kyle, won the Brooke
Scholarship, the principal academic prize for students for
the Bar. She was called to the Bar in Northern Ireland
later that month. The first woman solicitor was admitted
in the South in 1923 and by 1953 108 women had been
admitted, a substantial number of whom however did not
take out annual practising certificates; the Secretary of
the Law Society, Eric Plunkett, remarked that on current
trends "the proportion will be considerably higher in the
next generation".
12
1. C. Gamble, Solicitors in Ireland (1921), p 68.
2. Bebb v. Law Society, 1914 1 Ch. 286.
3. The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, 8 & 9 Geo. v.
c71, si.
4. Bebb v. Law Society 1914 1 Ch. 286.
5. I.L.T. & SJ., Vol. 35, p 507 (Nov. 2nd 1901).
6. I.L.T. & S.J., Vol. 43, p 151 (June 19th 1908) and Vol. 42, p
216 (Sept., 5th 1908).
7. I.L.T. & SJ., Vol. 33, p 110 (March, 5th 1898).
8. I.T.L. &, SJ., Vol. 1, p 388 (June 22nd 1867).
9. E. Marjoribanks, The Life of Lord Carson, Vol. 1, p 44.
10. I.L.T. & S.J., Vol. 14, p 208 (April 24th 1880).
11. I.L.T. & SJ., Vol. 54, p 24 (Jan. 24th 1920) and Vol. 55, p 272
(Nov. 5th 1921).
12. E. Plunkett, Attorneys and Solicitors in Ireland (1953) p 71.
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