Helena Normanton and the Opening of the Bar to Women

Helena Normanton and the Opening of the Bar to Women PDF

Author: Judith Bourne

Publisher: Waterside Press

Published: 2016-11-30

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1909976326

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In this first full-length account of Helena Normanton’s life and career, Judith Bourne tells of her fight to join the Bar of England and Wales and open it up to women. Helena Normanton and the Opening of the Bar to Women describes how her ambition was forged as a child after seeing her mother patronised by a solicitor. It tells how the press were quick to pigeon-hole and harass her, leading to disciplinary proceedings for ‘self-advertising’. Enmeshed in a world of men, Helena Normanton faced a constant struggle to establish herself against a backdrop of prejudice, misogyny and discrimination. The book describes how solicitors, fearful of the unknown, were reluctant to instruct her, leaving her to take on poor person’s cases, dock briefs and those few cases ‘deemed suitable for a woman’. But Helena Normanton was a force to be reckoned with. She was not just the first woman to be admitted to an Inn of Court, hold briefs in the High Court and Old Bailey, and (as one of two women) be made a King’s Counsel, but a prolific author, leading feminist and speaker who entranced audiences at home and abroad. Along with the controversies that eternally surrounded her and her own foibles, this is all contained in this captivating book. Reviews '[ An ] excellent biography of Helena Normanton, brilliantly researched by Judith Bourne... a captivating book for all aspiring barristers to read'-- Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers. ‘Bourne has succeeded in rendering Normanton as a human being, a woman with grit and aspiration, whose experiences were as often disappointing as celebratory in the context of her time and place’-- Professor Mary Jane Mossman (from the Foreword)

Hidden Heroines

Hidden Heroines PDF

Author: Maggie Andrews

Publisher: The Crowood Press

Published: 2018-10-23

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 0719827620

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The story of the struggle for women's suffrage is not just that of the Pankhursts and Emily Davison. Thousands of others were involved in peaceful protest and sometimes more militant activity and they included women from all walks of life. This book presents the lives of forty-eight less well-known women who tirelessly campaigned for the vote, from all parts of Great Britain and Ireland and from all walks of life. They were the hidden heroines who paved the way for women to gain greater equality in Britain. Fully illustrated with 52 black and white photographs.

Networks and Connections in Legal History

Networks and Connections in Legal History PDF

Author: Michael Lobban

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-09-03

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1108490883

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Explores networks of lawyers, legislators and litigators, and how they shape legal development in Britain and the world.

Brotherhood of Barristers

Brotherhood of Barristers PDF

Author: Ren Pepitone

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2024-05-31

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1009456741

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A critical investigation of masculinity, the gentlemanly professional, and the exclusionary culture of the British legal profession.

Women's Legal Landmarks

Women's Legal Landmarks PDF

Author: Erika Rackley

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-12-27

Total Pages: 704

ISBN-13: 1782259791

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Women's Legal Landmarks commemorates the centenary of women's admission in 1919 to the legal profession in the UK and Ireland by identifying key legal landmarks in women's legal history. Over 80 authors write about landmarks that represent a significant achievement or turning point in women's engagement with law and law reform. The landmarks cover a wide range of topics, including matrimonial property, the right to vote, prostitution, surrogacy and assisted reproduction, rape, domestic violence, FGM, equal pay, abortion, image-based sexual abuse, and the ordination of women bishops, as well as the life stories of women who were the first to undertake key legal roles and positions. Together the landmarks offer a scholarly intervention in the recovery of women's lost history and in the development of methodology of feminist legal history as well as a demonstration of women's agency and activism in the achievement of law reform and justice.

Women, Their Lives, and the Law

Women, Their Lives, and the Law PDF

Author: Victoria Barnes

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-12-14

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 1509962107

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This collection of essays honours Rosemary Auchmuty, Professor of Law at the University of Reading, UK. She has fostered the study of women's academic careers and, more politically, advanced progress on gender and equality issues including same-sex marriage and property law. Her research promotes the case of feminist legal history as a way of revealing the place of women and challenging dominant historical narratives that cast them aside. Just as Rosemary's work does, the book seeks to end the marginalisation and exclusion of women in the legal world, by including them. The book begins fittingly with a discussion of Miss Bebb, the woman whose biography Auchmuty deployed to push feminist legal history into the mainstream. It turns then to a discussion of women known and unknown and their struggles within the legal profession offering within those chapters a critical appraisal of the role of history and biography as a methodology. From there it moves to consider feminist perspectives and critiques of the dominant structures of private law. This is followed by chapters that explore those who educate the legal profession within the academy. The chapters, and the collection as a whole, examine areas of law that have a deep significance for women's lives.

Quiet Revolutionaries

Quiet Revolutionaries PDF

Author: Sharon Thompson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-09-08

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1509929428

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This book tells the untold story of the Married Women's Association. Unlike more conventional histories of family law, which focus on legal actors, it highlights the little-known yet indispensable work of a dedicated group of life-long activists. Formed in 1938, the Married Women's Association took reform of family property law as its chief focus. The name is deceptively innocuous, suggesting tea parties and charity fundraisers, but in fact the MWA was often involved in dramatic confrontations with politicians, civil servants, and Law Commissioners. The Association boasted powerful public figures, including MP Edith Summerskill, authors Vera Brittain and Dora Russell, and barrister Helena Normanton. They campaigned on matters that are still being debated in family law today. Quiet Revolutionaries sheds new light upon legal reform then and now by challenging longstanding assumptions, showing that piecemeal legislation can be an effective stepping stone to comprehensive reform and highlighting how unsuccessful bills, though often now forgotten, can still be important triggers for change. Drawing upon interviews with members' friends and family, and thousands of archival documents, the book is compulsory reading for lawyers, legal historians, and anyone who wishes to explore histories of law reform from the ground up. Winner of the SLSA Socio-Legal Theory and History Book Prize 2023. To listen to podcast episodes about the Married Women's Association, featuring interviews and archival research, visit quietrevolutionaries.podbean.com.

Muslim Women in Britain, 1850–1950

Muslim Women in Britain, 1850–1950 PDF

Author: Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor

Publisher: Hurst Publishers

Published: 2023-11-23

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1805263315

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The history of British Islam and British Muslims is a growing area of interest among historians and the general public. But, whilst Muslim women have featured in some research, their lives and experiences prior to the present day have remained obscure, if not ‘hidden’, in both academic and popular discussion. Uncovering Muslim women’s experiences and contributions to society in past generations is essential for us to build a full picture of Muslim life in Britain, then and now. This is the first book to address that gap, telling the stories of Muslim women who lived in Britain between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, from Victorian times to the years immediately after the Second World War—just before immigration profoundly affected the size and composition of Britain’s Muslim communities. It reveals a rich variety of experiences, including Muslim women who travelled to or away from Britain, and many who converted to Islam within the British Isles. Underpinned by feminist historical approaches, this groundbreaking book aims to make women visible where they have been hidden from or within history. Its fascinating accounts will reinstate Muslim women as actors, storytellers and storymakers who have shaped the history of Britain and of ‘British Islam’.

Behind the Wireless

Behind the Wireless PDF

Author: Kate Murphy

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-28

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1137491736

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Behind the Wireless tells the story of women at the BBC in the 1920s and 30s. Broadcasting was brand new in Britain and the BBC developed without many of the overt discriminatory practices commonplace at the time. Women were employed at all levels, except the very top, for instance as secretaries, documentary makers, advertising representatives, and librarians. Three women held Director level posts, Hilda Matheson (Director of Talks), Mary Somerville (Director of School Broadcasting), and Isa Benzie (Foreign Director). Women also produced the programmes aimed at female listeners and brought women broadcasters to the microphone. There was an ethos of equality and the chance to rise through the ranks from accounts clerk to accompanist. But lurking behind the façade of modernity were hidden inequalities in recruitment, pay, and promotion and in 1932 a marriage bar was introduced. Kate Murphy examines how and why the interwar BBC created new opportunities for women.