LADIES IN A COURT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18325, 15 February 1923, Page 9

LADIES IN A COURT.

PROTEST MADE BY JUDGE. [from own correspondent.] SYDNEY, Feb. 7. The innovation of placing a lady stenographer in the place usually occupied by the male shorthand reporter in the Victorian Criminal Court has met with the condemnation of the first Judge to experience it, and the young woman was reeved of her attendance. The Judge said he would like emphatically to protest against any lady being asked to sit in the Court and take notes of some of the cases heard in that Court. Apart from the case that was then about to be heard, there constantly arose cases in which the evidence was repulsive and the language very filthy, and he did not think that any lady should be subjected to the indignity of taking notes of such evidence. He would take his own notes in longhand unless arrangements could be made by the Crown Law Department for the attendance of a male stenographer. He felt that the presence of a lady stenographer in certain cases would interfere with the administration of justice. Male witnesses, for instance, might be loth to give necessary evidence freely, and even counsel might feel uncomfortable.