PORTIA BEGINS WORK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18757, 10 January 1923, Page 8

PORTIA BEGINS WORK

FIRST WOMEN BARRISTERS. “Here she is,” whispered the crowd which caused an almost unseemly stir outside Sir Henry Duke’s Court in the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division in London. The heroine of the occasion was Mrs Helena Normanton, the first woman berrister to take her seat in the Divorce Court. Mon barristers lost their accustomed staidness before their blushing new colleague, says o London paper. She looked charming in her wig and gown, but she was obviously ill at ease before the battery of curious eyes. Mrs Normanton was escorted by a brother barrister, Mr Skinner, in whose chambers she has been rending. It was the soft contour of the face and pink and white freshness which distinguished her from the other barristers on the benches. She wore pale bone spectacles, and anything but a serious legal look. Observers familiar with Sir Henry Duke’s Court remarked on the unusual tidiness of tho junior counsels' bench. They straightened their “weepers” often and cast curious looks about and behind them. Mrs Normanton achieved complete selfpossession by the lunch-time adjournment, and even yawned slightly at tho tedious incorrigibility of a witness. Miss Ethel Bright Ashford, another of tho women called to tho Bar, made a tour of tho various Courts in tho King's Bench Division on the same day. She wore her wig and gown, and, by general consent, looked charming in her professional attire. She intends to practise on tho South-eastern Circuit.