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Introduction
The 2012 biography of Heilbron, written by her King’s Counsel daughter, Hilary Heilbron KC, is the definitive work on the subject matter of this piece.[1] The monograph further expands upon the earlier 2009 ODNB work undertaken by Lady Hale[2] of Heilbron’s “life full of firsts.”[3]
As the biographical work on Heilbron makes clear, she was a trailblazer in every sense of the word. As we will see she was, inter alia, the first female recipient of a Gray’s Inn scholarship (1936), one of the first two female King’s Counsel (1949), the first female to lead in a murder trial, the first female judge when appointed Recorder of Burnley, the first female commissioner of assize (1957), the first female to sit as a judge at the Old Bailey (January 1972), the second female High Court judge (after Dame Elizabeth Lane), and the first female Treasurer of an Inn of Court. It is no wonder that the First 100 Years project has undertaken very interesting and thought provoking work on early female practitioners including Heilbron.
Before all this trailblazing activity is examined we must start at the beginning. Rose Heilbron, as she then was, was born in 27 St James Road, Abercromby, Liverpool on the 19th August 1914. Her father was Max Heilbron, a Liverpool based emigration agent and Hotelier, and her mother was Nellie Heilbron. Two daughters came from this union, Annie and Rose. Rose was first educated at Belvedere School, Liverpool.
University and call to the bar
Heilbron attended the University of Liverpool’s Faculty of Law (as it then was) from 1932 to 1937. AS noted above, she graduated with a first class LL.B. degree in 1935 and with an LL.M. degree in 1937. This was the first amongst many subsequent firsts in her life. Heilbron collected the full set of degrees when she was awarded an honorary doctorate in law (LL.D.) by the University of Liverpool in 1975.
After her University work in Liverpool Heilbron followed the path often trod by Liverpool lawyers and went on to the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn. This would be the start of a long relationship that would eventually culminate in Heilbron being elected the first female Treasurer of the Inn in 1985. In 1936 Heilbron was awarded the Lord Justice Holker scholarship, the first women to be awarded the scholarship. This scholarship was founded in honour of Sir John Holker (1828-1882), a Lord Justice of Appeal,[4] following a bequest by his widow, Lady Holker. She followed a non-binding provision made by her deceased husband that the residue of the estate left to her by him should be left to Gray’s Inn on her death. The scholarship now provides a yearly £10,000 award for a Gray’s Inn student studying for the BPTC.
On the 3rd May 1939 Heilbron was called to the Bar. On the 2nd February 1940 she was elected to the Northern Circuit. Heilbron joined her pupil master, Richard Trotter, in Chambers at 43 Castle Street, Liverpool.
Practice at the Bar – Crime and personal injury
Heilbron’s practice at the Bar focused on criminal defence work and personal injury work. In this way she foreshadowed the work of another famous luminary of Liverpool and the Northern circuit, namely, Sir Brian Leveson, Lord Justice of Appeal. The personal injury work undertaken by Heilbron links her to the recently elevated Amanda Yipp QC of Exchange Chambers, now Mrs Justice Yipp. Both worked in the area of personal injury and both practiced in Liverpool Chambers before their respective elevation to different divisions of the High Court.
Some commentators have argued that the absence of men, due to engagement fighting the Second World War, accounts for Heilbron’s early success at the Bar. Lady Hale is one proponent of this view.[5] This may well be the case but her subsequent highly successful career in silk following her elevation to King’s Counsel and the front row in April 1949 goes some way to rebut this contention. The lack of competition in this early period may have proved a much needed window of opportunity for Heilbron to shine and demonstrate her quality. But for the war this fillip might otherwise have been lacking.
Heilbron was involved in defending in many of the cause célèbre of her day. This made her a household name at home and abroad. She was in some ways a real life Boyd QC, albeit female, and in this way provided the type of inspiration that this fictional character provided for at least one future Liverpool silk and Lord Justice of Appeal (Sir Brian Leveson).[6] Heilbron was famous for her legal work and for balancing the demands of a career and family life. In relation to the Liverpool theme of these columns these early cases included the defendant Harold Winstanley. He worked at Knowsley Hall as a footman. His relations with the butler seem fraught and in a macabre reversal of the well-known phrase, it was not the butler who did it, but the footman. In this case it was the offence of murder and the butler was the victim. Winstanley was found guilty but was found to be insane.
Heilbron was elected a Bencher of the Honorable Society of Gray’s Inn in 1968. This was nineteen years after she had taken silk. As one commentator has noted this was, “long after her standing at the Bar would have merited it.”[7] In 1973 Heilbron became leader of the Northern Circuit following the customary election. This was another first as Heilbron was the first female leader of any of the circuits.
Judicial Work – Elevation to the family division
1956 sits alongside 2017 as one of the most important dates in the history of the judiciary. In 2017 we had our first female Supreme Court president when Lady Hale succeeded Lord Neuberger. 1956 is significant as this is the year in which we had the first ever female judicial appointment.[8] In that year Heilbron was appointed as Recorder of Burnley. She held the post until its abolition by the Courts Act 1971. She then became a Recorder of the Crown Court and Honorary Recorder of Burnley. January 1972 is also a significant date. It was then that Heilbron sat as the first women judge in the Old Bailey.
In 1974 Heilbron was elevated to the High Court and so became the second female High Court judge, after Dame Elizabeth Lane. Heilbron was assigned to the Family Division. This has rightly been queried having in mind that her long practice experience would have more naturally meant that the Queen’s Bench Division would be her home. Her extensive work in the Court of Appeal on criminal appeals (see below) goes some way to address this experience point.
Together with her husband, Heilbron moved down south to a flat at 2 Gray's Inn Square. The couple maintained a Liverpool residence. Heilbron had built a house in Alerton. By all accounts it is a beautiful home. From 1979 through until 1982 Heilbron was the Presiding Judge on the Northern Circuit. It was during this period that she presided over, inter alia, the famous headless corpse case in 1980.
A search of the law reports reveals that there are one hundred and ten reported decisions that feature Heilbron as the sole judge or as one of a panel of judges. This includes her High Court[9] and Court of Appeal decisions.[10]
Heilbron’s career culminated with a final first. In 1985 she has elected Treasurer of Gray’s Inn. She was the first woman treasurer of any of the four Inns of Court.
Legacy – A pathfinder who was followed
It should be of no surprise that Heilbron has had a lasting and profound influence on women in the legal profession. This is because of both her undoubted professional success and excellence, but also because of her trailblazing activity in balancing the heavy demands of professional life with the equally heavy demands of family life. Heilbron manged to combine both with great success. Her legacy has inspired a number of highly successful women lawyers who have gone on to high legal office, these include Dame Vera Baird QC, sometime Labour MP and Solicitor-General of England and Wales who referred to Heilbron as “My Hero and a trailblazer.”[11] Lady Hale, herself a member of the Northern Circuit, following her time as an academic at the University of Manchester, has observed; “Not only was Heilbron the first woman to achieve spectacular success at the bar, she was also a pioneer in combining her career with a happy family life… Heilbron was a beacon to all the women who joined the Northern Circuit in her wake.”[12]
It could be argued that Liverpool has played a disproportionately large part in influencing the development of English law and legal practice. Heilbron perfectly bares out this thesis in that she exemplifies how the City and the Northern Circuit have facilitated success that may have been harder to come by, or slower in the realisation, in different areas of the country. Commenting on the more progressive nature of the Northern Circuit Lady Hale has noted that:
“In 1994 there were six women High Court judges, five of whom (Dame Joyanne Bracewell, Dame Ann Ebsworth, Dame Janet Smith, Dame Heather Steel, and Dame Brenda Hale) were members of the northern circuit (and the sixth, Dame Mary Arden, came from a family of Liverpool lawyers). However slow the circuit had been to acknowledge one of its most successful practitioners, others had been able to follow where she had led.”[13]
Heilbron retired in 1988. There are a number of extant likenesses of Heilbron. These include a number of photographs in the National Portrait Gallery as well as a portrait by Mendoza which hangs in Gray’s Inn, London. Unlike her predecessor vignette subjects there does not appear to be any extant recordings of Heilbron. Heilbron died in a nursing home in Islington on the 8 December 2005 following a period of illness.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that Heilbron was a legal pioneer who chalked up many firsts throughout her long and distinguished career. Whether or not this success would have been achieved without the Second World War is one moot point which this column has cast doubt on. Another area of interest relates to the role progressive legal Liverpool and the Northern Circuit played in facilitating her phenomenal success. If she had neither bolstering influence would she have been as successful? We will never know but she did practice in this environment and was she was very successful. Her natural talents outstripped the prejudices and discrimination of her time. It must also be noted that the experience of previous vignette subjects has demonstrated that men have also benefited from the ethos and conditions that are extant on the Northern Circuit and in the City and the benefits to legal practice that these seemed to have provided, and indeed still do according to a number of practitioners on the circuit.
Written by Dr John Tribe.
References
[1] See: “Rose QC, The Remarkable Story of Rose Heilbron: Trailblazer and Legal Icon” (Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2019). Hereafter Heilbron Pioneer.
[2] See: Brenda Hale, ‘Heilbron, Dame Rose (1914–2005)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Jan 2009; online edn, Jan 2015. Hereafter Hale Heilbron. See also: D. Lynch, ‘Mrs Justice Heilbron’, A century of Liverpool lawyers, ed. N. Fagan & G Bryson & C Elston (Liverpool Law Society, Liverpool, 2002), pp.159–162. See also: Ian Glidewell, ‘Master Heilbron’, Graya, 70 (2007), 86–90.
[3] Hale Heilbron.
[4] Sir John Holker was admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1851, called to the Bar in 1854, made a Bencher in 1868 and became the Inn’s Treasurer in 1875.
[5] See: Hale Heilbron.
[6] Lord Justice of Appeal, Sir Brian Leveson, remarked at a University of Liverpool alumni event in October 2017 that he was inspired by Boyd QC to pursue a career in the law, as opposed to the medical route that his mother had planned for him.
[7] Hale Heilbron.
[8] In Hale Heilbron Lady Hale notes, “The first woman to hold salaried judicial office was Sybil Campbell (appointed a metropolitan stipendiary magistrate in 1945), the first woman to preside over a jury trial was Dorothy Dix (as deputy recorder of Deal in 1946)…”
[9] Her reported High Court decisions are: Re D (A Minor) (Wardship: Sterilisation) [1976] Fam. 185;
[10] Her reported Court of Appeal decisions are: R. v Ferguson (Brian) (1980) 2 Cr. App. R. (S.) 63; McQuaid v Anderton [1981] 1 W.L.R. 154; Anderton v Wish (1981) 72 Cr. App. R. 23; R. v Ford (Stephen) (1980) 2 Cr. App. R. (S.) 125; R. v McDiarmid (Alan) (1980) 2 Cr. App. R. (S.) 130; R. v McCarthy (Gerald Joseph) (1980) 71 Cr. App. R. 142; R. v Bartle (David Richard) (1980) 2 Cr. App. R. (S.) 136; R. v Lamb (Peter David John) (1980) 71 Cr. App. R. 198; R. v Collison (William Henry) (1980) 71 Cr. App. R. 249; R. v Bentham (William) (1981) 3 Cr. App. R. (S.) 229.
[11] Vera Baird, My legal hero: Rose Heilbron. The Guardian, 11 August 2010.
[12] See Hale Heilbron.
[13] ibid.
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