Jean Bryden, who was one of the first hundred women to graduate in Law from the University of Glasgow, was born in Partick, Glasgow on 24th April 1911. Her father, Robert, was a lawyer. When she began her studies in the Faculty of Law in 1930 she was living at the family home at 12 Selborne Road, Jordanhill. Combining a law apprenticeship with academic study for the B.L.degree she took exams in her stride, only once and very marginally falling short of 80 percent in each subject. She graduated B.L.in November 1933. The seldom updated General Council records describe her thereafter as a law clerk. She did not seem to have followed through to petition the Court of Session for admission as a solicitor. Only a minority of women law graduates did so although those who did not often continued to offer indistinguishable services by which they were regarded in effect as solicitors. Jean Eliza Bryden died in 1966, aged 54.
Sources
University of Glasgow Registry & General Council Records
Scotlands People
