Isabel Sinclair was not only among the first hundred women to graduate in Law from the University of Glasgow but the first to be appointed to an academic post in the Faculty. She had other claims to being at the forefront of women’s entrance to the profession. Edinburgh graduate Margaret Kidd was the only trailblazer whose footsteps she followed to become the second woman QC in Scotland (1964) and to join the bench as sheriff-substitute (Airdrie 1966-68) and sheriff (Lothian and Borders 1968-79).
She was born on 11th April 1911 in Eastwood, Glasgow to Isabella (nee Thomson) and William, a confectioner’s agent. She was a clever pupil at Shawlands Academy and went up to university in 1929 as the holder of a Black Bursary, awarded for excellence in Mathematics in Glasgow University’s Bursary Competition. Her curriculum in the Arts Faculty revealed a breadth of interests and aptitudes. She earned distinctions in French, English and Maths and did well in Natural Philosophy, Political Economy and Moral Philosophy. After graduating M.A.in 1932 she became a successful journalist. In 1938 she married James Gordon MacDonald. A few years later and in the middle of war she returned to university to study law, perhaps like many of that generation, rethinking the future. In 1943 she enrolled in Constitutional Law and Civil Law, in which she took first place. First places were to follow in Evidence and Procedure and Public International Law. After graduating in 1946, one of only two women to do so that year, she entered the profession and in 1949 joined the Faculty of Advocates. It was quite a landmark. Twenty six years had passed since Margaret Kidd had become the first woman member of the Faculty of Advocates. Like Dame Margaret, though following at chronological distance, she also took silk (1964). That glass ceiling proved stubbornly impregnable, however, and it wasn’t until 1989 that Lynda Clark (Baroness Clark of Calton) was appointed the third woman QC in Scotland.
In 1950 the University Court minutes confirm that ‘Miss Isabel Sinclair’ was appointed as the teaching assistant in Public International Law, suggesting that, at least in the early days at the bar she still had time to develop and share an interest in a subject she had excelled in as a student. Her professional reputation, however, was secured in her years as a sheriff in Lanarkshire and Lothian and Borders. She brought a wry feminist humour to the bench until her retirement in 1979. She died in Edinburgh in 2005, aged 94.
Sources
University of Glasgow Registry and General Council Records
Scotlands People
Law Lists
