Rose Heilbron

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Dame Rose Heilbron
DBE
Heilbron in April 1949
Justice of the High Court
In office
1974–1988
Personal details
Born(1914-08-19)19 August 1914
Liverpool, England
Died8 December 2005(2005-12-08) (aged 91)
Islington, England
Cause of deathPneumonia
SpouseNathaniel Burstein
EducationThe Belvedere School
University of Liverpool
OccupationLawyer and judge
Known formany firsts in UK legal history

Dame Rose Heilbron, DBE (19 August 1914 – 8 December 2005) was a British barrister who served as a High Court judge. Her career included many "firsts" for a woman – she was the first woman to achieve a first class honours degree in law at the University of Liverpool,[1] the first woman to win a scholarship to Gray's Inn, one of the first two women to be appointed King's Counsel in England,[1] the first woman to lead in a murder case, the first woman recorder, the first woman judge to sit at the Old Bailey,[1] and the first woman treasurer of Gray's Inn. She was also the second woman to be appointed a High Court judge, after Elizabeth Lane.

Early life

Heilbron was born in

Lord Justice Holker scholarship at Gray's Inn in 1936,[3] and she became one of only two women to hold a master of laws degree in 1937. Two years later she was called to the bar, and joined the Northern Circuit in 1940.[3]

Career

Heilbron practised mainly in personal injury and criminal law. Her rapid rise may have been aided by the fact that so many men were in the armed forces in the

Second World War during her first six years as a barrister.[3]

She was junior counsel for the West Indian cricketer

minefield on the beach between Crosby and Southport in a claim against an army officer; the unsuccessful appeal to the House of Lords contributed to the Crown Proceedings Act 1947
.

By 1946, Heilbron had appeared in ten murder trials,

Court of Appeal
quashed his conviction as unsafe in 2003.

Heilbron's successes in the first half of the 1950s included the defence of four men accused of hanging a boy during a burglary, in which she was able to show that the death had been an accident;[3] and the defence of Louis Bloom, a solicitor from Hartlepool who was accused of murdering his mistress in his office, but was found guilty of manslaughter.[3] However, in 1953 she was unable to save John Todd from the gallows for the murder of a shopkeeper in Aintree.

She led in several other important cases, included Ormrod v Crosville Motor Services on vicarious liability in 1953, and Sweet v Parsley on the presumption of a requirement for mens rea in criminal offences in 1970.

The Old Bailey

Heilbron was appointed as Recorder for

Family Division, and created a DBE. She took charge of many criminal cases while presiding judge of the Northern Circuit (the first woman Presiding Judge of any Circuit[1]
) from 1979 to 1982.

In 1975, the Home Secretary,

cross-examine the complainant about their sexual history in an effort to attack their character. In 1976, she was made an honorary fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.[2]

She became a bencher at Gray's Inn in 1968, and was the first woman to head one of the four Inns of Court when she became its treasurer in 1985. She retired from judicial office in 1988.[2]

Personal life

Heilbron's hobbies included golf and walking, and she was a keen member of Soroptimist International, the worldwide organisation for women in management and the professions, working to advance human rights and the status of women. She was an Honorary Colonel of the East Lancashire Battalion of the WRAC. It was reported that she was the first woman in Liverpool to wear a calf-length evening dress.[3]

In 1945, she married the Dublin-born general practitioner, Nathaniel Burstein (1905–2010). He became a consultant at a Liverpool hospital, and there is little doubt that the availability of medical knowledge was a great help to her in some cases. Her daughter, Hilary, was born in January 1949;[5] Hilary also became a barrister and was in 1987 appointed a QC, the 29th woman so honoured.[6]

Death

Heilbron and her husband had moved from Liverpool to London when she was appointed a High Court judge. She died in a nursing home in Islington, of pneumonia and cerebrovascular ischaemia. A biography of Heilbron, by her daughter Hilary Heilbron, was published in 2012.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Shennan, Paddy (26 October 2012). "Hilary Heilbron on writing the life story of her mother – the late Liverpool legal pioneer Dame Rose Heilbron". liverpoolecho. Retrieved 25 November 2018.
  2. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/96231. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Morton, James (13 December 2005). "Dame Rose Heilbron". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
  4. ^ "Dame Rose Heilbron". www.telegraph.co.uk. 10 December 2005. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
  5. ^ First 100 Years: Rose Heilbron Biography, retrieved 23 December 2022
  6. ^ "Women at the Bar: an historical perspective". Counsel. Retrieved 25 November 2018.

Further reading

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