Adela Prout was from Lincolnshire, the daughter of William Prout, a civil servant and his wife Anne. Born in 1896 she was the youngest of four children and lived in Devonshire at the time of the 1911 census. She was 29 when she matriculated at Glasgow University to study law. The high point of her academic achievement was in the session 1926-27 when she won the Robert Ross Prize in Scots Law, taking first place. To this she added equal first place in Constitutional Law, 7th in Jurisprudence and 4th in Evidence and Procedure. She graduated B.L. in 1928. According to General Council records she continued to work in a law firm after that but not, it seems, as a fully qualified solicitor. If so, she was not alone in the cohort of early women graduates whose excellent academic records did not lead to the career rewards of their male counterparts. She died in 1984, aged 88.
Sources
UG Archive Registry and General Council
