Mary Deans was one of the first hundred women to graduate in Law from the University of Glasgow. She was a lawyer’s daughter, born on 13th January 1915. Her father Albert Gibson Deans was in practice as a solicitor in Glasgow. The family home was in Bearsden. She began her higher education in the Arts Faculty, graduating M.A. in 1935. In her final year she made the direction of her ambition clear by combining Arts and Law. She took classes in Civil Law and Constitutional Law and History, finally passing this class in 1938. In that year she graduated B.L. but added a pass in Mercantile Law the following year and graduated LL.B in 1939. Though she would now have completed an apprenticeship and in all probability be working as a law clerk she did not proceed to petition admission as a solicitor. Mary wed James Knox Napier in the University Chapel on 11th April 1940. She died in 2000, aged 85, in the same year as her husband James, aged 89.
Sources
University of Glasgow Registry and General Council Records
Scotlands People
