NO WOMEN SOLICITORS.

Mataura Ensign, 26 January 1914, Page 5

NO WOMEN SOLICITORS.

0 The claim of Miss Gwyneth Bebbj on appeal, that she was •entitled to be admitted by the Law Society to the preliminary examination -with a view to becoming a solicitor, was rejected by the Court of Appeal sitting at London on December 11, The Master of th!e Bolls said: that the appeal raised a very important point as to the right of women to be admitted to the profession of .a solicitor. Three hundred years ago Lord Coke had expressed the view that women could not be attorneys>-at-law- and there was evidence that there was at common law a disability on the part of women to be attorneys. Apart from what Lord Coke had said, no woman had ever been an. attorney-at-law, and; no woman (before the present proceedings were started) had ever applied or attempted to be an attorney-at-law. There had therefore* been a long uniform and uninterrupted usage of what was: the common law. He decided the question upon the ground! that at the date of the passing of the Solicitors Act, 1843, there was a disability on the part of women to be attorneys. That Act and! the amending Acts had not destroyed the pre-existing disability imposed by the common law. No doubt, added his lordship, many women, and in particular Miasi Bebb. were in education, intelligence and competency superior to many candidates who would go up for the Law Society's examination®, but with that, of course, the court had nothing whatever to dtt.

The Lords Justices agreed, and the appeal was dismissed, with costs.