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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Helena Normanton and the Opening of the Bar to Women Bourne, Judith Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 28. Sep. 2021 Helena Normanton and the Opening of the Bar to Women Judith Bourne King’s College, London Ph.D The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior consent of the author Abstract Helena Normanton was the first woman to be admitted to an Inn of Court after the passing of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 and was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1922. The Bar was closed to women until the passing of this legislation. She was also the first woman to be briefed both in the High Court and the Central Criminal Court. She went on to become one of two first women King’s Counsels and practised law past retirement. Normanton’s childhood ambition was to become a barrister. She declared that her one goal in life was to open the legal profession to women. This thesis will consider what role Helena Normanton played, if any, to the formal opening of the legal profession (in particular the Bar) to women in 1919 with the passing of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act and will examine her subsequent legal career in order to better understand her role in the fight for substantive equality. Normanton’s battle to practise was an essential part of the struggle for women’s legal equality during that period and therefore her life needs to be recorded, especially as the effort for equality is still on- going. Normanton’s archives are too sketchy for an honest and complete biography, but much of her journey towards practice as a barrister can be told, especially when placed in the context of the women’s movement. Her story is essential because, as Parry wrote, ‘appreciation of the role of the individual agent .... can influence if not steer the course of i the wider legal, historical and social development’.1 Female lawyers need to understand their heritage as women now total half of law undergraduate entrants. Normanton’s entry to an Inn of Court marks women’s formal entry to the legal profession. Her career is a good example of the beginning of women’s struggle for substantive equality in the legal profession. Her story needs to be revealed and examined ‘to produce a more complete and truthful explanation of how things were, and how they are now’.2 1 Parry, R. G. ‘Is Legal Biography Really Scholarship?’ (2010) 30 Legal Studies 208-229, p. 208. 2 Auchmuty, R. ‘Whatever happened to Miss Bebb’ Legal Studies Vol. 31 No. 2, pp199-230, p. 201. ii Table of Contents List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1 Normanton’s Early Years Chapter 2 Normanton’s Life in Context Chapter 3 Normanton’s Struggle for admission as a student of Middle Temple Chapter 4 After Admission Chapter 5 Normanton’s Legal Career: Her Burgeoning Career 1922 – 1924 Chapter 6 America: December 1924-May 1925 Chapter 7 Life and Work after America Chapter 8 Normanton’s Later Legal Work and Attitudes towards Practice Chapter 9 Campaigns Chapter 10 Normanton’s Death Conclusion iii List of Abbreviations Bebb Bebb v Law Society [1914] 1 Ch. 286 CMW Council of Married Women DLRU Divorce Law Reform Union MPITRC Married Person’s Income Tax Reform Council MT Middle Temple MWA Married Women’s Association NFWT National Federation of Women Teachers NCEC National Council for Equal Citizenship NCW National Council of Women NUSEC National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship NUWSS National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies NWCA National Women Citizen’s Association ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography TNA The National Archives UWV Union of Women Voters iv WL The Women’s Library WFL Women’s Freedom League WSPU Women’s Social and Political Union v Acknowledgments With special thanks to Pat Thane for all her help, guidance and patience. Much gratitude is owed to the librarians at the British Library, the Inns of Court, in particular Lesley Whitelaw at Middle Temple, and the Women’s Library for their assistance and kindness. Many thanks are owed to Judith Hodson, archivist at Varndean, for her generosity. I am indebted to Frances Burton for her unfailing kindness during the period of this thesis and in particular for our monthly ‘reading’ meetings in the BL (and for all the tea and cake). Gratitude is also owed to Caroline Derry and Avis Whyte for their constant encouragement and help. Mary Jane Mossman answered an unsolicited email from me and returned it with an abundance of information and warm encouragement. Patrick Polden also met with me and provided invaluable help. Thank you to the researchers who have found me: Rose Pipes and Elizabeth Cruickshank and for sharing their knowledge. Thanks are also due to Mari Takayanagi for sharing her work on the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919. I am grateful to Robert Walker and Christopher Forsythe who have been invaluable in providing information about the Bar. I am also grateful to my whole extended ‘family’ (that includes friends) for their support and love. And finally, apologies to my children who have suffered an often absent mother and a husband without whom this would never have been written. This thesis is for my parents who were both denied an education. vi Introduction ‘I longed to go to prison with the rest of my comrades in the fight [to vote] but I knew that this could never be because, if I had a prison sentence, I would never be able to open the profession of law to women, which I regarded as my job in life.’ Helena Normanton, 1950.3 This thesis will focus on Helena Normanton’s contribution to the formal opening of the legal profession (in particular the Bar) to women. It will consider her role in the passing of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, which granted a significant degree of formal equality. It will then examine her subsequent legal career in order to better understand her role in the fight for substantive equality. Helena’s story is remarkable on many levels, not least because she was from a lower-class and non-legal background, and was initially prevented by the law from achieving her goal. She went on to become the first woman to be admitted to an Inn of Court (Middle Temple), the first woman to hold briefs both in the High Court and the Old Bailey, 4 and one of the two first female King’s Counsels in England and Wales, and she practised law until past the normal retirement age. Helena was not the first women to be called to the Bar (that honour went to Ivy Williams), though, as she 3 Speech by Helena Normanton to members of the Suffragette Fellowship, 6 February 1950, WL: 7HLN/4 4 The first woman to be briefed in any court was Monica Geikie-Cobb, in December 1922: see Polden, P. ‘Portia’s Progress: Women at the Bar in England, 1919-1939’ International Journal of the Legal Profession, Vol. 12, No.3, November 2005 pp293-33, at p. 315. 1 Introduction commented in an article written about herself, ‘I shall never get this error out of the minds of the Press’.5 Normanton was born into a modest background 1882, in Stratford, East London, to parents who separated shortly after the birth of her younger and only sibling, Ethel, when Normanton was aged two. Her father died in 1886, leaving her mother to raise her daughters alone. Her mother’s ambition was that both of her daughters would become independent and autonomous, in an era when women were essentially legal non-persons. Normanton trained as a teacher, gained a history degree through extension studies and finished her teaching career as an extension lecturer to the University of London. Around 1916 she moved to London and at first was a tutor and extension lecturer, then edited the political weekly India. All the while she was part of a network of women campaigning for equality for women. In 1918 she vigorously stepped up the campaign to open the Bar to women, by very publicly attempting to enter an Inn of Court. Would-be barristers could not formally train for the Bar without membership of an Inn of Court, so membership was paramount.
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