By the Skin of Their Teeth

Features FIRST 100 YEARS FIRST 100 YEARS Edward O’Sullivan, the Minister admission as barristers. In 1902, Ada and by the leading politicians of the day, for Lands, who was sympathetic to the Evans had qualified in law from the including men such as Bernard Wise and suffrage cause, wrote to Scott asking Law School of the University of Sydney. Charles Wade. Stella Miles Franklin said what women wanted in the way of Despite being properly qualified, she Scott had “a genius for making delight of By the skin remedial legislation. She scrawled on the was not admitted to practise because it association”. back of his letter a staccato manifesto: was thought that a woman was not a Famously, Scott considered life too “[O]wn their own children, family “person” for the purposes of the LPA. short to waste it in the service of one maintenance, Infants’ Protection Bill, Between February 1904 and 1917, man. She used her comparative wealth of their teeth Equal Pay for equal work, offices of dignity Evans wrote to successive Attorneys- and connections to promote causes that and power in the State, juries, judges, General seeking change to the law. She was would expand women’s material options Police matrons, economic independence for assisted by feminists who had been active beyond either marriage or prostitution. JUSTICE VIRGINIA BELL AC, who was sworn married women.” in the Womanhood Suffrage League and One gesture in this direction was her gift in as a Supreme Court judge in 1999 and as a In 1912, Scott delivered a speech to who, after gaining the franchise, had made in 1921 of 50 pounds to the University of Justice of the High Court of Australia in 2009, the National Council of Women titled the removal of the disqualification high Sydney as a prize for women law students. “Laws Women Need”. [Among many on their list of needed reforms. These were Despite her circumstances of explains the dicey history leading to the passing things] she called for women to be remarkable women. advantage, clear-eyed Scott had of the Women’s Legal Status Act in 1918. eligible for appointment as magistrates, In her day, Scott was one of Sydney’s sympathy for women whose life justices of the peace, jurors, judges, and most well-connected and well-known experience was far from privileged. In members of parliament and councils. women. For many years she conducted 1903, she campaigned on behalf of Ethel IN 1902, THE NEWLY FEDERATED COMMONWEALTH was fêted as something of a celebrity a salon from her home in Jersey Road, Herringe, a young woman convicted of Australia led the world by its provision for women to vote throughout her trip to the US. Before An important centenary Woollahra, on Friday afternoons. It was of the manslaughter of her former and to stand for election to the Commonwealth Parliament leaving, she had an audience in the Oval This year marks the centenary of the attended by notable artists and writers employer who had seduced her and on a universal and equal basis with men. That year, Vida Office with President Theodore Roosevelt enactment of the Women’s Legal refused to marry her after learning of Goldstein, an Australian suffragist, was the Australian and who told her that Australia’s experiment in Status Act 1918 (NSW), which largely her pregnancy. Herringe gave birth to New Zealand delegate to the International Women’s Suffrage equality was “a great object lesson”. addressed the last of Scott’s agenda twins in Darlinghurst jail. They were Conference in Washington. The Womanhood Within a few years, Goldstein, like items. It provided that a person shall immediately taken from her. Carrie Catt, the President of the American Suffrage League, Suffrage League fellow pioneering feminist Rose Scott, had not by reason of sex be deemed to be Scott viewed this as barbarous with politicians with the disarming frankness of the Americans, told Goldstein Sir William Lyne come to see the vote as, if not a hollow under any disability or subject to any cruelty. She took up Herringe’s cause, that Americans associated Australia with being “the abode of and Sir John See victory, certainly a victory that was far disqualification from being elected pressing Bernard Wise unsuccessfully strange beasts and barbarians”. Catt thought it remarkable that after women won from securing women equality with men. to act as a member of the Legislative for her release from custody. She argued the right to vote this exotic land should have supplied a delegate who was so up in NSW via the Their economic dependence, exclusion Assembly, or as an elected member of that, just as the law acknowledged to date and fully cognisant of the rights of her sex. Such was Female Suffrage from public office and subjugation by a local council, or to be appointed a provocation in the case of a man killing the novelty of Australia’s treatment of women that Goldstein Act, passed in 1902. a double-standard in matters of sexual judge or magistrate, or to be admitted his wife or her lover when caught in morality put women well behind the to practise as a barrister or solicitor. flagrante, there should be recognition of eight ball. The laws that perpetuated What was the source of the the provocation experienced by women this inequality were largely those disqualification of women from being at the hands of men in mitigation of the enacted by State legislatures and, while elected to parliament or entering the severity of the criminal law. women could stand for election to the legal profession? In the case of election Below, the charge sheet for Ethel Herringe, In Scott’s view, Herringe was a a woman convicted of manslaughter of her Commonwealth Parliament, they were to the Assembly, the answer was clear. employer who refused to marry her once he political prisoner: a woman who had ineligible to be returned to either house TheWomen’s Franchise Act 1902 (NSW) knew she was pregnant with twins. sought to retrieve her honour in a of the NSW Parliament. gave women the right to vote, and by s 4 Above, Rose Scott who took on Herringe’s case situation in which the law had failed to once her babies were taken from her. In 1908, the NSW Government provided that nothing in that Act should Sources: ancestry.com.au, State Library NSW provide her with effective redress. under Premier Charles Wade introduced be taken to “enable or qualify a woman Wise may have frequented Scott’s the Contagious Diseases Bill. If enacted, to be nominated as a candidate at any salon, but the gulf between them was its practical operation would have election or to be elected as a member” unbridgeable. As Attorney-General, allowed the indefinite incarceration of the Legislative Assembly. Wise had opposed the Crimes (Girls’ of prostitutes arrested for soliciting The position was a little more Protection) Bill which sought to raise the and found to have a venereal disease. nuanced under the Legal Practitioners age of consent for girls from 14 years. Goldstein protested – what difference Act 1898 (NSW) (“the LPA”), which Scott was committed to this measure, had women’s suffrage achieved if the established a board comprising the having seen the exploitation of girls who government felt safe to introduce a judges of the Supreme Court, the measure like it? Attorney-General and two barristers to approve “properly qualified persons” for 40 LSJ I ISSUE 46 I JULY 2018 ISSUE 46 I JULY 2018 I LSJ 41 Features FIRST 100 YEARS FIRST 100 YEARS BEFORE THEIR TIME: women pioneers of law 1921 1924 1955 1972 1979 1981 2008 2013 2015 ADA EVANS: FIRST WOMAN TO MARIE BYLES: FIRST WOMAN ELIZABETH EVATT: FIRST ANN PLOTKE: FIRST WOMAN MAHLA PEARLMAN: FIRST MARY GAUDRON: FIRST JULIE WARD: FIRST WOMAN MARGARET BEAZLEY: GABRIELLE UPTON GRADUATE WITH A BACHELOR TO PRACTISE AS A SOLICITOR WOMAN TO RECEIVE THE ELECTED TO THE LAW WOMAN APPOINTED TO WOMAN APPOINTED SOLICITOR- SOLICITOR APPOINTED FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT FIRST WOMAN NSW OF LAWS IN 1901 AND FIRST TO IN NSW AND FIRST WOMAN TO UNIVERSITY MEDAL IN LAW SOCIETY COUNCIL SOLICITORS ADMISSION BOARD, GENERAL IN AUSTRALIA AND FIRST DIRECTLY TO THE OF THE NSW COURT ATTORNEY-GENERAL BE ADMITTED TO THE NSW BAR ATTEND AN INCORPORATED FROM SYDNEY UNIVERSITY FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT OF WOMAN APPOINTED TO THE SUPREME COURT OF APPEAL LAW INSTITUTE AGM THE LAW SOCIETY IN 1981 HIGH COURT IN 1987 were too young to have much, if any, October 1918. In speaking for the Bill, the electorate would not return women maiden speech delivered on 26 August take women away from their household published on the Silver Jubilee of understanding of sexual intercourse or Attorney-General Hall suggested NSW to parliament and the legal profession 1925 gives the measure of the woman. She responsibilities and, perhaps more the Feminist Club. She bemoaned its consequences. Wise, for his part, was was lagging behind the other states in would not be overwhelmed by them. pointed out to her fellow members that: troubling, it would empower them to sit that 20 years had passed and yet few concerned with the risk of blackmail permitting women to enter the legal Unpalatable as this view may have been, “Every turn of the political wheel in judgment of men. women were establishing themselves in by promiscuous, precocious harlots. profession; he recalled one woman who there was an essential truth to it. The touches [women]. As women tax payers While the Women’s Legal Status Act professional and public life. While one Among the arguments against the had passed her examination for admission social and economic pressures which and workers, they are subject to the laws permitted women to be appointed as sympathises with her frustration, it is Bill was the view that in sub-tropical to the Bar at the same time as he had.

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