Page:Women Wanted.djvu/301

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IN THE PROFESSIONS
275

Parliament in 1917 passed a bill granting to women in that country the right to practise law.

Specially significant is the legal situation in England, the land where Chrystabel Pankhurst, denied the opportunity to practise law, became instead a smashing suffragette. Now, see the vacant places in the London law courts where day by day women clerks are appearing with all of the duties, though not yet the recognition, as solicitors. And the English Parliament at last is considering a bill which shall permit women to be admitted to this branch of the legal profession in England. This bill really should be known as Nancy Nettlefold's bill. The year that Nancy Nettlefold arrived at her twenty-first birthday and was presented at court, Cambridge University announced in June, 1912, that she had taken the law tripos, her place being between the first and second man in the first class honours list. And she at the time determined to make the winning of the legal profession her contribution to the woman's cause. With four other English women, who have also passed brilliant law examinations, she has financed and worked indefatigably in the campaign to that end. To-day they have that conservative organ of public opinion, the London Times, urging in favour of their case: "Many prejudices against women have been shattered in this war. And there is no stronger theoretical case against the woman lawyer as such than against the woman doctor." The bill permitting women to enter the Law Society has passed a second reading in the House of Lords,