History of Gender Commons^™

Legal Paperwork And Public Policy: Eliza Orme’S Professional Expertise In Late-Victorian Britain, Leslie Howsam

History Publications

For women in late-nineteenth-century Britain, a university degree in law could launch a lucrative and prestigious career that was professional in character but lacked a name because it challenged the very culture of expertise. Highly regulated by powerful institutions, the legal profession established conditions beyond precarity to exclude women until 1919 and the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act.1 However, the universities, operating with different values, began cautiously in the 1870s to allow women to attend lectures and later to write examinations and, eventually, to graduate with the degree of Bachelor of Laws. Historical studies of women and the legal profession have …