Madge Easton Anderson’s achievements are commemorated at the entrance to the School of Law on a brass plaque conferred by Historic Environment Scotland. She was the first woman to graduate in Law from the University of Glasgow (BL 1919, LLB 1920), the first woman to qualify as a solicitor in Scotland (1920), the first in the United Kingdom, and the first woman to qualify to practise in both England and Scotland (1937).
She was born on 24th April 1896 to Anne Chisholm and Robert Easton Anderson, a cutlery salesman and later a surgical instrument maker. She was brought up in a modest, comfortable home in Pollokshields with two sisters, Ellen and Muriel. All three girls were pupils at Hutchesons’ Girls Grammar School which had a strong record of preparing girls for higher education. Ellen went on to graduate in Medicine from Glasgow (MBCHB 1919). Madge matriculated in the Faculty of Arts in 1913, aged sixteen, a route that for many young women ended in teaching but had never ended in a legal career. The Court of Session in the 1901 case of Hall v Incorporated Society of Law Agents opined that, ‘because of long continued practice and inveterate usage’ women were not ‘persons’ within the meaning of the legislation governing entrance to the profession of solicitor. Madge Anderson therefore took a bold step in the summer after she graduated MA (1916) by beginning to contemplate a future in Law. There were few hopeful experiences to build on. Charlotte Wood Small (MA 1908) was the first woman to be admitted to the Faculty (1910) but despite gaining several prizes, she left without graduating and went into teaching. Women students faced challenges in acquiring a law degree that required greater determination than of their male counterparts. Nonetheless Madge recovered from a couple of early resits in 1917 to build a good academic record, gaining first class certificates in Evidence and Procedure, International Private Law, Public International Law and a merit in Constitutional Law, as well as sharing the Guthrie Prize In Public International Law. She graduated BL in 1919, LLB the following year after adding passes in Jurisprudence and Constitutional Law to her curriculum. With an MA and an LLB she now had the ’gold standard’ of academic qualifications in Law. Admission to the profession, however, could only be achieved by satisfying the rules and procedures of the profession as set out in the Law Agents (Scotland) Act of 1873.
There were several routes to becoming a solicitor. Not all required a law degree but all required apprenticeship. Few firms would be persuaded to offer the opportunity to women at a time when they were excluded from becoming solicitors. Maclay, Murray and Spens of Glasgow, however, were aware that change was coming, and soon. Law firms were suffering wartime shortages of personnel and women were campaigning for civil and political rights. Madge Anderson may also, it seems, have impressed one of her examiners at university who was also a member of the Spens family. In May 1917 the firm concluded an indenture of apprenticeship with her. For the next three years Madge, like all apprentices, combined office work with university classes scheduled to fit around the office day. Even after she had successfully concluded both in 1920, there was still a legal hurdle to overcome. Although the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919 opened the legal profession to women Madge Anderson had begun her apprenticeship two years before the Act and the Society of Incorporated Law Agents had refused to register her indenture because women could not become solicitors. All this obliged her to petition the Court of Session. The Court’s resolution of the issues and Lord Ashmore’s observation that in the matter of admission to the legal profession the Sex Disqualification Act now placed her ‘in the position of a man’ was a legal landmark.
If the first generation of women lawyers were now in the same position as men with regard to entrance to the profession, their career prospects were not so equal. Madge Anderson’s subsequent career was a testament to her determination. In the 1920’s , in addition to working as a solicitor in the Glasgow firm of Steuart & Gillies she gained some very valuable experience and useful contacts in two women’s organisations. In 1920 she took on the role of Poor Man’s lawyer in the Queen Margaret College Settlement Association, set up by university women to promote the welfare of families in the deprived area of Anderston. For a decade she helped build up an embryonic but useful service offering advice on housing, family, delict and employment matters, mainly to women clients. She also joined the Soroptimists and became the Glasgow branch’s first Secretary in 1927. Through that organisation she made contact and became close to two English Soroptimists who were also solicitors and also Poor Man’s lawyers. Edith Berthen of Liverpool and Beatrice Davy of London set up the first all-woman firm in London in 1931 and offered her a training place two years later.
Madge Anderson found that the road to professional development lay in England. After she left Steuart & Gillies about 1927 she worked as a single practitioner for a few years. In October 1931 she took a career step which once again made her a pioneer. She began researching a thesis on International Law for a PhD. Had she finished it she would have been the first woman to earn a doctorate in Law at Glasgow, a milestone not reached until 1982. She was on track to do so but received an attractive offer from London. In 1933 she moved to London to join Berthen and Davy. In 1937 she qualified in English law and became a partner in ‘Messrs Berthen, Davy & Anderson’.
Madge Anderson’s achievement is unique to the first generation of lawyers, not only in being the first woman solicitor but in how she continued to learn and enhance her legal experience by working with voluntary organisations, tackling postgraduate research and in middle age, studying to add a qualification in a different jurisdiction. Her resourcefulness and determination may have been a necessity but it enabled her to succeed in building a career within a profession which had opened its door but was yet to offer a welcome. In the final phase of that career she returned to Scotland, to Perthshire where she ran a small private hotel and continued to hold a practising certificate until the early 1960s. She died aged 86 on 9th August 1982.
Sources:
University of Glasgow Registry & General Council Records
Scotlands People
Law Lists
Coss Petitions CS46/1921/1/5 (NRS)
Woman Law Agent: Madge Easton Anderson , https://nrscotland.gov.uk
