As I write today the first taste of winter begins with a crisp frost and a bright red sky this morning. As our firm starts another year in practice we welcome a new female member of staff putting the male legal employees in the minority and Marlborough Law. It was 100 years ago on 23rd December 1919 when the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 was given Royal Assent. Section 2 of the Act allowed women to be admitted as solicitors after serving 3 years if they had a university degree.
This solicitor is proud to say it was a scottish woman Madge Easton Anderson who was the first woman admitted to practise as a professional lawyer in the UK, after qualifying as a solicitor in Scotland. She was born in Glasgow in 1896 and having been the first woman to graduate with a law degree from Glasgow University she became the first woman solicitor in 1920 aged just 24.
It took this solicitor slightly longer than that having started in Industy first but I did graduate from Glasgow so feel a connection with Madge Anderson.
Many of the cases that women were given in the early 1920’s were the boring traffic cases and when “bad words” had to be read out they were written down and passed to the other side or even moved to a male panel.
