MODERN PORTIAS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4826, 25 March 1925, Page 1

MODERN PORTIAS.

WOMEN BARRISTERS IN ENGLAND.

FORCING RECOGNITION.

Lcs< than four years ago tome wasn’t, a woman barrister in England. Ne w there are 40, Not that they all practise, but then, neither do all the men who have qualified for the English Bar. A social as well as an intellectual cachet comes of being a b a rris tc rl a t-law.

Quite a dozen of the 40 women barristers have put up their names in Chambers, and been briefed at least once. Perhaps the best known is Miss Helena Normanton, who created a sensation in legal circles by taking the first three parts of the law examination at a single sitting instead of at three separate ones as i» usual. She was not, however, the first woman to be called to the Bar —that distinction belongs to Mi»s Ivy But Miss Normanton wats the first woman barrister to appear in the Divo've and Chancery Courts, and the first to practise as counsel at the Old Bailey. mistaken for a man. True that last was due to chance. Miss Normanton, dressed in wig and gown, was sitting in the court during the hearing of a case in which three men were charged with fraud. One of them appealed for the services of a lawyer, and being told to select his counsel from among the membeip of the Bar present, hit upon Miss Normanton, without apparently noticing she was a woman, .thanks to the rale laid down by the Benchers that h woman barrister’s wig must completely cover her hair! ■ Her more recent achievement, and oim that affects married women in other professions, is that of getting a passport granted in her maiden name. It was for a visit to New York, and one can well imagine the' force of the arguments she would have brought to bear on any Ellis Island official who da’ed to cast the slightest doubt oil her qualifications for landing in the States, as once happened to Flora Annie Steel,, the novelist. SUCCESSFUL PLEADING. Miss Ida Duncan is another woman barrister who is making a name for herself and proving the wisdom of throwing open the legal profession to women. Not long ago she successfullyappeared in the Court of Criminal Appeal for two men accused oi house-breaking and stealing jewellery. The Court quashed the convictions, and the Lord Chief Justice in giving judgment isaid that Miss Dun'can hal ai'gued the case for the appellants with clearness and force.

Not all the members of the English Bar are of the English race. Miss Mitham Tata, for instance, who quail-; fieri two years ago after “eating her dinners” in Lincoln’s Inn, is a highborn Pars! from India, educated nt Bombay University. She and her mother came to England in connection with the Suffrage question, and while the younger studied law the elder took a course in Economics at London University. Now they have both returned to the land of their birth and Miss Tata has been admitted an Advocate of the Bombay High Court, where she is specialising as a pleader in cases that affect the native women.

If, as there is a-tendency to say, the path of women lawyers in Ehg'land is not as rosy as in France, there is every possibility of it becoming so when it has been, sown as long with the seeds of opportunity and recognition. Fifteen years ago, when Colette YVer, the novelist, wrote . “Ces Dames du Palais,” the path of the French women lawyers was not as rosy as it is now.