Among the people added to the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is Gwyneth Bebb (1889-1921), who gave her name to the case that challenged the exclusion of women from the legal profession: Bebb v the Law Society. Law was the last profession in England, apart from the church, to hold out against women's entry. Women had been trying to gain admission for 40 years. Their lack of success led campaigners to try a legal challenge, and Bebb was selected as the test case in 1913.
A brilliant student, she had studied law at Oxford when women could take the examinations – she got a first – but were not awarded degrees. She lost the case, the judges holding that women were disqualified from carrying out a public function and would remain so until parliament changed the law.
For the most part, the press was sympathetic and the publicity helped to mobilise a campaign. After repeated bills in parliament, the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 finally admitted women to the legal profession.
Bebb, meanwhile, had worked throughout the war in the Ministry of Food using her legal skills to prosecute black-marketeers. That she was not the first woman to apply to the Bar was solely because she had her first baby the day after the act was passed.
She should have been England's first woman barrister, a position that would have guaranteed her appearance in the dictionary of biography before now, but such fame was not to be. A second pregnancy ended disastrously with the death of her baby in 1921 and, after two months of suffering, of Gwyneth Thomson herself. She was 31.