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A century of first female milestones in Irish legal history

Published in Issue 1 (January/February 2021), Volume 29

1890 Letitia Walkington and Frances Gray conferred Doctor of Laws (LLD).

1905 Margaret Byers (née Morrow) and Henrietta White awarded honorary LLDs.

1920 Frances Kyle and Averil Deverell first students admitted to the King’s Inns.

Helena Early and Dorothea Heron granted leave to be bound as apprentices to solicitors by the court of examiners of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland. Eugénie Hoy first to sit for the solicitors’ preliminary examination.

1921 Frances Kyle called to the bar (both Irish jurisdictions).

1922 Averil Deverell first to practise as a barrister.

Helena Early first to be appointed a commissioner for oaths.

1923 Dorothea Heron first to be admitted solicitor and Helena Early first to practise as a solicitor.

1924 Ida Duncan first to appear as a barrister in the Court of Criminal Appeal in England.

1927 Kathleen Burgess called to the bar in London.

Kathleen Donaghy (afterwards Grobel) first solicitor to practise in Northern Ireland.

1928 Margaret Aiken first to practise at the bar in Northern Ireland.

Marion Duggan appointed law reporter by the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for Ireland.

1930 Kathleen Butler Garrett first American woman admitted to the bar of the Irish Free State.

1931 Kathleen Phelan, Waterford barrister (1927), first to be appointed examiner of titles in the Land Commission.

1941 Frances Elizabeth Moran the first senior counsel (SC).

1968 Moya Quinlan (née Dixon) the first woman elected a council member of the Law Society of Ireland.

1969 Frances Elizabeth Moran made honorary bencher of the King’s Inns.

1974 Margaret Aiken appointed assistant probate registrar in Northern Ireland.

1977 Mella Carroll the first senior counsel (SC) to practise.

1979 Mella Carroll elected a bencher and chair of the Bar Council.

1980 Moya Quinlan the first woman president of the Law Society of Ireland.

1989 Eilis McDermott the first queen’s counsel (QC) in Northern Ireland.

On this Day

April 25

1922 Commandant O’Neill, 3rd Cork Brigade IRA, was shot dead at the home of a Protestant family in Bandon, Co. Cork. In a series of unattributed reprisals, thirteen Protestant civilians were shot dead in the surrounding area over the following four days.
1920 RIC Sergeant Cornelius Crean, brother of the explorer Tom Crean, was killed by the IRA in an ambush near Upton, Co. Cork.
1870 Daniel Maclise (64), history and portrait painter who worked for most of his life in London, died.
1719 The life and strange adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe was published.
1819 Vere Foster, philanthropist and educationist, born in Copenhagen, where his Irish-born father was British minister.
1987 Lord Justice Gibson and his wife were killed by an IRA bomb as they crossed the border south of Newry, Co. Down.
1917 Ella Fitzgerald, jazz singer, born in Newport News, Virginia.
1922 Commandant O’Neill of the third Cork Brigade IRA was shot dead at the home of a Protestant family in Bandon, Co. Cork. In a series of unattributed reprisals, thirteen Protestant civilians were shot dead in the surrounding area between 26 and 29 April.
1915 During the First World War, Allied troops landed on Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula. The disastrous Gallipoli campaign, ending in January 1916, cost 46,000 Allied lives, including over 2,295 Irishmen.

A century of first female milestones in Irish legal history

Personal Histories

On this Day

April 25