12 minute read
I Ivy Williams
IVY WILLIAMS
In this centenary anniversary year of her Call to the Bar, Ivy Williams is seen through the eyes of her distant cousin, Bridget Wheeler.
Ivy Williams © Courtesy of Bridget Wheeler
On the evening of 10 May 1922, Ivy Williams was called to the Bar by The Inner Temple. So ended the struggle for admission to the profession by women that has been well documented in this publication by Dr Judith Bourne. Her professional life has also been the subject of scholarly work by Dr Caroline Morris to whom I am indebted for rekindling my intention to write a fuller biography of Ivy.
Ivy and I are cousins twice removed. In reviewing her accomplishments, I have had recourse not only to such public domain information as is available but also to family recollections and photographs, and the letters book of my great uncle Percy Prior, who acted for Ivy as her solicitor.
Ivy and I share a common great- (great again, in my case) grandfather. Adin Williams, modestly described as a mercer in Oxford, was rather more than that. He was at some time election agent to Gladstone, a mover and shaker in local Oxford politics, a committee member for the Oxford and Salisbury railway line, an investor in property, possibly a man with insufficient time to spend with his family, a liberal to the core, fervent Congregationalist, guardian of the poor, an Oxford Street commissioner, regular litigant for the rights of citizens, and strong supporter of education for women. Ivy referred to him warmly in her speech making. Of significance, Ivy never met him. Her father took his young family away from Oxford after an unorthodox marriage to the family’s (very) young maid and only returned full-time to Oxford after his death in 1876; Ivy was born the following year. All her understanding of her grandfather’s views and passions came from her father. To me, there was in context a certain inevitability of that night in May 1922, as if Ivy’s whole life had been directed towards that moment. In an interview that she had given reported in the Dundee Evening Post inter alia as long before as 1 April 1904, she stated:
“Like my brother, the late Mr Winter Williams, who was called to the Bar at Inner Temple in 1899, I have been educated expressly for the legal profession, and have been studying law continuously for eight years…” (She goes on to describe her unique qualification from both Oxford and London universities and describes the exams she has already passed as more challenging than those of the Bar.)
Ivy’s life in 1904 seemed to be heading directly towards a career in law, and one as an advocate. At 27, she was already an outstanding student and had expressed her object in becoming a barrister to be a poor man’s lawyer and set up a type of legal dispensary. She had been described in 1903 as a “doughty champion” entering the ranks and all looked set for a predictable clash with the establishment, in respect of which she had already declared herself willing to practise outside the system and to take the matter to parliament if need be. The concept of acting outside the profession was not new – there existed at Lincoln’s Inn at least the possibility of acting ‘under the Bar’; Eliza Orme had practised as an unqualified person and Maria Rye had trained female law clerks from a legal stationers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. What Ivy seemed to have in mind was a more public role, and wry comment at the time speculated as to how she could participate in a hearing without the necessary Call.
What is it that transpired to bring together all the necessary ingredients for the country’s first woman barrister?
Nature and nurture. First, she was brought up in Oxford in an intellectually aspirant and liberal family. She rubbed shoulders with the great minds of the day. It was a time of realisation that women could and should take their own place in society.
Not only that, she was surrounded by ambitious and pioneering family members – if you like, the gene pool was excellent. Her father was a local solicitor who extended his business into banking and property. He was a vocal critic of the government. Her brother, Winter, was called by The Inner Temple and was poised on the brink of a career in law and politics before his early death. Her cousins, the Cousins family, boasted women doctors and missionaries, including Constance Cousins (whose correspondence with Ivy and others survives), who crossed from India into Bhutan walking through the mountains to quell an outbreak of cholera – the first white woman to visit that country. Her relative John Williams was martyred in Erromango, having been a prominent missionary. Another relative, Joshua Williams QC, was a leading property lawyer of his day.
She had the brain power and suitable connections. She had not only passed her various examinations with distinction, but also she had fully engaged in the legal process. In June 1900, she had been elected President of the Women’s Debating Society at Oxford, and she wrote in a landmark debate at Lincoln’s Inn in 1904, where she tempered support for the admission of women to the profession and suggested that there be a requirement that candidates hold a degree in law. She had little fear of public speaking: she was an avid supporter of the temperance movement and spoke regularly at meetings, she chaired various local committees, and spoke at Congregationalist meetings. She attended Liberal Party meetings and mixed with the likes of the renowned pacifist Lady Ottoline Morrell.
And she had money. She was a benefactor. She had no need to earn, and never married; her course seemed set.
In spite of this, Ivy’s progress stalled after the early wave of publicity at the turn of the century. Because it stalled, it ultimately positioned her perfectly in 1922 to become the first woman called. In reality, there is no reason why Ivy’s heralded (but unfulfilled) attempt to break down the barriers in the early Noughties would have been any more successful than the handful of other candidates who fell at that hurdle – it was only with the passing of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act in 1919 that the way was cleared. The passage of time however, made the event largely token, as by then she had settled into an academic career, and was happier in the role of enabler rather than the disrupter she had promised to be in her younger days. By 1922, she had given up all hope of practice.
She rubbed shoulders with the great minds of the day. It was a time of realisation that women could and should take their own place in society.
What happened after 1904 to set her back from what looked set to be a trailblazing career?
Perhaps, a number of things. Her brother, whom she adored, had first a serious accident at a factory in Cowley and then was struck with a fatal infection and died suddenly in 1903. Her mother was too distraught to attend the funeral and Ivy attended with her father, who was himself already unwell. She spent time with her ailing father and mother in 1904 hoping to find a cure, from trips to the mud baths in Germany and to the sea in Bournemouth, but to no avail. Her father died in September 1904. Before his death, he had transferred property to her, and much of her time was thereafter consumed with looking after her mother, running down the various businesses her father had, and administering the bequests he made to the church.
Her own health – about which she seems to have been particularly anxious – was not good, and she claimed it had prevented her from doing anything for some time. So much so that she withdrew from her parish council in 1909 on the basis of poor health, and sold her horse, carriage and sidesaddle on doctor’s advice. Her grandfather’s will had been challenged in court and its final administration took 40 years to complete. In short, there was much to distract her at home. This was all shortly followed by the First World War and then the Spanish flu. In this period, her life was one of service to the local community and relentless downsizing and gifting of her not insignificant inheritance to the University (in the form of scholarships in honour of her brother and property to house university women) and to the Radcliffe Infirmary.
Then her mother died in 1920.
It was only after being freed from family commitments that Ivy seems to have been able to recast her course. With the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919, she was able to join The Inner Temple in 1920, having performed magnificently in the Bar exams (having the advantage of being able to prepare under the tutelage of a professional Bar tutor, Cuthbert Spurling). She was able to seek (and obtain) the discretionary exemption from some dining obligations, and so head the queue of pending female applicants for Call. The rest, as they say, is history.
What of Ivy the woman?
I have often wondered if she might have become a serious suffragette. There were the rallying cries of 1903, her lifelong friendship with the militant suffragette Nora MacMunn, and her liberal speech. However, she seems to have been wary of extremism, stemming perhaps from her background of political expediency. Apart from an absence from the 1911 census (a protest abstention by many supporters of women’s suffrage), her espousal of the cause seems to have been intellectual only. Possibly this made her an acceptable candidate for governmental roles such as the technical representative to the conference at The Hague in 1930 and her appointment to the Aliens Deportation Advisory Committee in 1932.
There has been gentle speculation about her sexuality. Like many in her family, she never married and kept a household of unmarried women. In 1939, she was living not only with Nora MacMunn, but also with her housekeeper and Alice Rylance – a retired, elderly missionary who was possibly a contact through the Cousins family. Somewhat surprisingly, in 1920, she worked with Nevill Forbes to contribute to a Russian translation of the works of Garshin. Nevill, a brilliant academic who eventually took his own life, was known to be gay. Whether Ivy was aware of this, or whether she was making a small stand of solidarity, is impossible to fathom. My own feeling is that she was probably too busy and too committed to enabling others to succeed to be involved in anything other than intellectual friendships.
Family recollection and letters speak to the immense pride felt by her relatives for her. She impressed them all. She was consulted not only on financial or legal matters, but also on how to bring up children. Her cousins – mostly Oxford graduates – were by and large gentle, unworldly people who held her in complete awe. A family member remembers that she would visit often to offer advice. Sometimes she did not keep appointments, but there was never any complaint. She walked with a customary limp from a skiing accident and was regularly taking extensive cures for perceived poor health. Her manner was remembered as brusque (although her letters could be very affectionate), but she was never censured for it. She was a woman of quiet energy and practicality, qualities she respected in others. When she became blind in her later days – a family weakness that my great-aunt Cordelia also inherited – she dealt with it pragmatically. I can remember the huge Braille books she created that my great-aunt stored and took great pleasure from. Unafraid of hard work, she seems basically to have reinvented the wheel, more smoothly and more efficiently, with her Braille primer.
She was a woman of quiet energy and practicality, qualities she respected in others. When she became blind in her later days … she dealt with it pragmatically.
A small sense of sadness is that the almost missionary zeal with which she embraced her faith in her younger years seemed to have weakened as she aged. Her will bequeathed to family members and friends only. She called for her body to be cremated and no commemorative stone marks her passing.
So, cousin Ivy is remembered chiefly for being the first woman to be called by the first Inn of Court to Call women. She was also amongst the first women awarded degrees at Oxford University, the first woman to be awarded the degree of Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford, and the first woman to teach law at an English university. All great achievements, but perhaps given the times changing after the war, and given her preparation, inevitable and slightly token. Both Baroness Heather Hallett and Baroness Ruth Deech claim her as one of their heroines, which underlines the inspiration she gives to others.
Did she appreciate the way in which women would be embraced by the legal community? She did foresee the role women would rise to play in the legal landscape when she foresaw the possibility (“not for a very long time”) of women judges. I often wonder if she would consider that now, a hundred years later, adequate progress has been made. She certainly envisaged the role of female barristers in the short term as advocates for women and children, in much the way that female doctors initially largely filled such a role – and possibly still do. In this, she would probably be rewarded by the significant presence at all levels of women in the family courts. Would she have been as impressed by the representation of women more generally in the upper echelons of the professions?
