Women Refused at British Lawyer's Bar.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 31 July 1914, Page 7

Women Refused at British Lawyer's Bar.

On December 2, 1903, a special tribunal of Judges, sitting in the House of Lords, and presided over by the Earl of Halsbury, Lord High Chancellor, delivered their decision against Miss Bertha Cave, who was seeking admission to Gray's Inn, London, that she might enter the barristers' profession. On December 4, 1900, a law had been published in France enabling women to practice as barristers, and next day, December 5, Madame Petit was therefore allowed to take the oaths required from persons entering this profession in that country. But in the British case the Lord Chancellor said that the tribunal had decided against their applicant, on this ground—that there was no precedent for women being called to the English Bar, and that he himself and fellow Judges were unwilling to create such action. Just, a week previously—November] 26 —Mile. Marguerite Dilhan, who had been called to the Bar at Toulouse, in France, on July 13, 1903, pleaded as a barrister in a French criminal court—the first occasion on which one of the feminine gender had been allowed to do so in- that country.