| LEGAL HISTORY | The first women to clear the bar in By Jenny Chambers

Early pioneers Women to practise at the NSW Bar by 1975 In 1824, Saxe Bannister (1790–1877) became the first Year of admission person to be admitted to practise as a in New 1 Sybil Morrison 1924 South Wales. His admission was concurrent with his 2 Nerida Cohen 1935 being sworn into the office of attorney general of New 3 Ann Bernard 1941 South Wales with a right of private practice at the first 4 Beatrice Bateman 1942 sitting of the Supreme Court on 17 May 1824.1 5 Klara Rudlow 1953 Almost a century would pass before a woman was 6 Elizabeth Evatt 1955 admitted to the New South Wales Bar. That woman 7 Kathleen Trevelyan 1957 was Ada Evans (1872–1947), whose admission took 8 Janet Coombs 1959 place on 12 May 1921. Ada had graduated from 9 Helen Knox 1960 the University of ’s Law School in 1902 (and, 10 Susanne Schreiner 1962 incidentally, was ’s first female law graduate). However, before Ada Evans could be admitted to 11 Mary Cass 1963 practise, the NSW legislature had to clarify the position 12 Cecily Backhouse 1964 as to whether a woman came within the meaning 13 Anna Frenkel 1964 of a ‘person’ and, concomitantly, could therefore be 14 Helen Gerondis 1965 determined to be a ‘properly qualified person’ and a 15 Margaret O’Toole 1965 ‘fit and proper person’ as those terms were understood 16 Beatrice Gray 1968 under the Legal Practitioners Act 1898 (NSW).2 The 17 Jenny Blackman 1968 question was resolved by the enactment of the Women’s 18 Mary Gaudron 1968 Legal Status Act 1918 (NSW). That Act relevantly 19 Joan Palfreyman 1968 provided that a female should not, by virtue of her 20 Jane Mathews 1969 sex, be deemed to be under any disability or subject 21 Naida Haxton 1971 to any disqualification as to preclude her from being 22 Francine Ruggero 1970 admitted or from practising as a barrister or solicitor of 23 Pat Moore 1971 the Supreme Court of New South Wales.3 24 Priscilla Flemming 1971 Sadly, by the time that Ada Evans succeeded in her 25 Carmel Marlow 1972 quest for admission, her enthusiasm to practise law is 26 Margaret Beazley 1975 said by her family to have been lost irretrievably and she never proceeded to practise at the New South Wales Forum, a section of the New South Wales Bar Bar. 4 That latter accolade belongs to Sybil Morrison Association, which set Brodsky the challenging task (nee Gibbs) (1895–1961) who was called to the Bar in of identifying the first women to practise at the New 1924. Over the next 50 or so years, another 26 women South Wales Bar and to then investigate and record would follow in Sybil Morrison’s pioneering stead. these women’s experiences of practice.5

Oral history project Brodsky was exhaustive in her research which included Over recent months, the unique stories of these female combing through the NSW Law Almanacs to identify trailblazers have been investigated and brought to all female admissions in the relevant period; reviewing life by Juliette Brodsky, a freelance broadcaster and archival newspapers and audio records held by the journalist, in the form of a multimedia oral history National Library of Australia and the ABC; studying project. The project was commissioned by the Women academic theses and works. She then contacted and interviewed (where possible) the women and their contemporaries who, inevitably, included members

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Nerida Cohen at her desk. Photo: Jonathan Goodman. Beatrice Bateman and the first five of her seven children, holding baby Gregory. Front row, L to R: Thomas, Beatrice, Rosalind and Edmund. Photo: courtesy of Beatrice Gray and former members of the judiciary, academics, long very early in the piece and did – to refuse, to decline standing practitioners and clerks, as well as relatives to do family law work. It was really a choice between and friends of the women. [doing] family law or starvation, so I chose starvation and it really was very difficult indeed for quite a number Women at work of periods, but I’ve sure never regretted it’.

The project is comprised of a series of vignettes about Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the women each of the 26 women to practise at the NSW Bar by interviewed for the project have sharp memories of 1975. Each of the interviews provides a unique insight being discriminated against on the basis of their gender into the challenges and victories of life at the Bar. in their efforts to establish a practice. The Hon. Justice A common thread among most of the women Margaret Beazley AO (no. 26) recounts that her then interviewed is that, upon being called to the bar, they tutor, the Hon. Justice Murray Tobias AM RFD ‘had a were advised and confined, at least initially, to practise huge difficulty in persuading people to brief me. They in family law and matrimonial matters. Although many didn’t consider that a female was appropriate to give of the women who followed that path work to and that was just an attitude’. recounted their days of practice fondly, In the face of such adversity, Justice the Hon. Acting Justice Jane Matthews Beazley, who was the first woman to be AO (no. 20) – the first woman to take appointed to the NSW Court of Appeal full judicial office in New South Wales, (in 1996), recalls that her attitude was initially in the District Court and later, ‘[y]ou just keep doing the work that the Supreme Court and the Federal you’re given, and it builds up’. Court of Australia - took exception to Sue Schreiner (no. 10) tells of how, such suggestions. Her Honour recalls: ‘I in protest at her male colleagues’ realised fairly early in the piece that most suggestions that she robe in the Divorce of the women who were there, who were Court’s toilets instead of in the robing at the bar at the time were specialising in room, she thought: ‘Well, this is not family law, not particularly because they right’. She says ‘at the time of robing, wanted to but because that was really the that’s when you finally talk about only area where solicitors were prepared settlements and all the rest of it and to accept that there was a legitimate place I wasn’t going to go in the toilet and for women barristers. I didn’t want to do change while all this was happening, so family law. So I had to make a decision Jenny Blackman AO

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• Priscilla Flemming (no. 24), who was the first female at the private bar to be appointed queens counsel in 1985;

• Elizabeth Evatt AC (no. 6) who practised for only a short time but was later appointed the first chief judge of the Family Court;

• Naida Haxton AO (no. 21) who, before coming to the New South Wales Bar, was the first female to practise at the Queensland Bar and who later became the editor of the NSW Law Reports; and

• Beatrice Bateman (no. 4) and her daughter Beatrice Gray (nee Bateman) (no. 16) who, remarkably, Mary Gaudron. Fairfax Photos were both among the first 16 women to practise at the bar. I thought ‘bugger that’. I bought the brightest pink petticoat I could find and I used to go down and strip Project launch down with the men, and at the beginning, it was a bit The project has ensured that the compelling experiences strange but after a while nobody really noticed’. of the first women to practise at the New South Wales On a social level, the barriers between men and Bar is recorded and preserved for years to come. All of women at the bar were also entrenched and it took a Brodsky’s records of interviews and research materials certain strength of character and tenacity for some of will be donated to the Bar Association. The project will the more overt aspects of those divides to be broken launch online in early 2011. Invitations to the launch down. Janet Coombs AM (no. 8) recalls that in her will be advertised through the Bar Association in due first three years of practice, she and the other female course. barristers were precluded from attending the annual Endnotes Bench and Bar Dinner as it was held at the University 1. C H Currey, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 1, Melbourne Club which did not permit women. Desperate to University Press, 1966, at 55 – 56. attend the dinner, she lobbied Nigel Bowen, who was 2. Rosalind Atherton (Croucher), ‘Early Women Barristers in NSW – solo journeys – the glory of the pioneer’, chapter 9 of G Lindsay and the then president of the Bar Association, for change C Webster (eds), No Mere Mouthpiece: Servants of All, Yet of None, and, subsequently, the dinner’s venue was moved to LexisNexis Butterworths, 2002, at 116–120. the Wentworth Hotel. Notably, many of the women 3. See Atherton at 116–117. 4. Atherton at 116, citing an interview with Mr Stuart Kyngdon, the who participated in the project spoke of Janet Coombs’ great-great-nephew of Ada Evans. It has also been suggested that generosity and kindness to women who came to the Ada Evans was not permitted to practise because the then Chief Justice, Sir Frederick Darley, did not approve of women at the Bar: bar in, among other things, sharing her chambers and, Babette Smith ‘A Lady of Law’, Bar News, NSW Bar Association, famously, the fact that for decades she took every new 1995, at 39. female barrister out to lunch upon their admission. 5. Female barristers who practised predominantly in other Australian States or Territories (although they may have been admitted Brodsky has collected dozens of such anecdotes and subsequently to the New South Wales Bar) have not been featured in the project. histories, including from, and about, women such as: 6. Thanks to Juliette Brodsky, author of the WBF multimedia oral history project, for the generous provision of her research to the • the Hon. Mary Gaudron AC QC (no. 18), who writer. aspired to be a barrister from the tender age of eight and went on to be nicknamed ‘Mary the Merciless’ at the bar and, of course, the first female appointed to the Office of Solicitor General of New South Wales and the first female justice of the High Court of Australia;

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