Mabel Edna Mitchell and her sister Lillian Maud Mitchell (LL.B.1927) were among the first hundred women to graduate in Law from the University of Glasgow. Mabel was born in Glasgow on 2nd October 1905 to Mary Beattie and Thomas Mitchell. At that time Thomas was described as a railway clerk and the family home was at Braeside Street in Maryhill. Later he became an accountant but did not survive to see his daughters graduate. Mabel’s academic record is remarkable for its range. She graduated B.Sc.in 1927, MB. Ch.B in 1930 and B.L.in1931. Her path through the curriculum in the Law Faculty was concurrent with classes in the Medical Faculty. The only hint of stress on her timetable was that she chose to sit the degree exams in Constitutional Law (1927), Civil Law (1929) and Law of Scotland (1929) at the second diet. More remarkable was the high standard of passes she achieved. Medical Registers show that she became a medical practitioner from the mid- 1930s to at least the early 1940s. She lived in Clarkston. Later she moved to Cumbria and was in practice there in the 1960s. She died there on 7th August 1989, aged 83. Her sister Lillian had also moved to the Wetheral area and died a few years earlier.
Sources
University of Glasgow Registry & General Council Records
Medical Registers 1935-63
Scotlands People
Ancestry.co.uk
