New Delhi. 30 December 2019. This decade ends with another landmark completed. It has been 100 years since Lincoln’s Inn in London, England, UK admitted its first female bar student.
The first woman to become a member of an Inn was Helena Normanton, who was admitted to Middle Temple on 24 December 1919, following the passing of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act. Called to the Bar in November 1922, she went on to be the first female barrister to appear in the High Court, in 1922, and the first woman to obtain a divorce for a client.
Gwyneth Marjorie Bebb was an English lawyer. She was the plaintiff in Bebb v. The Law Society, a test case in the opening of the legal profession to women in Britain. She was expected to be the first woman to be called to the bar in England; in the event, her early death prevented that, and Ivy Williams was the first woman to qualify as a barrister in England, in May 1922.
As records of Lincoln’s Inn’s Black Books show, in January 1919 the Council of Lincoln’s Inn met with twenty-nine male Benchers present. During this meeting the Right Honourable Lord Muir Mackenzie referred to communications he had received from the Treasurers of the other Inns of Court in relation to the application of a “Lady for admission as a student of this Honourable Society”.
It is not clear whether this is in relation to Marjorie Powell, or Gwyneth Bebb, who had both applied at a similar time. However, Marjorie Powell was admitted to the Inn a year and three days later, on 16th January 1920, less than a full month from the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 receiving Royal Assent. This meant that she was the first female student of Lincoln’s Inn. Marjorie Powell was admitted even before Gwyneth Bebb, to whom she arguably owed the pleasure of being able to join an Inn of Court or to practice law. In 1920, whilst she was lecturing in Manchester, she joined Lincoln’s Inn. At the age of 26 she was the first female student to be admitted to Lincoln’s Inn and one of only three female students to join that year.
However, Marjorie was never called to the Bar to practice law, choosing instead to further her teaching of Economics. In 1921, after only having worked at the University of Manchester for a very short amount of time she was promoted from an assistant lecturer to a lecturer. Her salary at the university was £300 per annum. In September 1920, she married the renowned physicist Harold Robinson in her home town of Market Drayton. Harold Robinson also worked at Victoria University, Manchester and he was a senior lecturer in physics.
She was swiftly followed by eight more women who were called to the Bar by Middle Temple in 1922 and by others who were admitted as solicitors or Called to the Bar by Inner Temple, Lincoln’s and Gray’s Inns.
Our pioneers at Middle Temple include Monica Cobb, the first woman to hold a brief in Court; Sybil Campbell the first woman stipendiary magistrate (full-time judge); Barbara Calvert, the first woman Head of Chambers in 1974; Barbara Mills, the first woman to be made Director of Public Prosecutions in 1990 and Patricia Scotland the first black woman to be appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1991.
