Eliza Orme

Eliza Orme (25 December 1848 – 22 June 1937¹) was the first woman to earn a law degree in England, from University College London in 1888.

Eliza Orme (25 December 1848 – 22 June 1937) was the first woman to earn a law degree in England, from University College London in 1888. ==Career== Although Orme did not receive her degree until 1888, she began working towards legal practice in 1872 with support from Helen Taylor, who paid her fee to become a pupil at Lincoln's Inn where she was a pupil in the chambers of a barrister, John Savill Vaizey, in 1873. However, her aspiration to be recognised as a "conveyancer under the bar" was blocked. Until the passing of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, women were not permitted to qualify as a barrister or a solicitor in England. Instead, she established an office on Chancery Lane in 1875¹, initially with Mary Richardson, and from the mid-1880s with Reina Emily Lawrence, continuing to work on legal matters until about 1904. Their office prepared the paperwork for wills, mortgages and property conveyancing. Patent agency and probate settlements could be undertaken by non-solicitors as they were unregulated. In 1903 Orme was interviewed by the Law Journal, and recounted ‘I “devilled” for about a dozen conveyancing counsel who kept me busily employed on drafts they wanted done in a hurry, and for twenty-five years I found it both an interesting and profitable employment’. In 1893, Orme was invited to send papers to the Congress on Jurisprudence and Law Reform as part of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which was the first time women were invited to join a formal legal congress. Her paper, The Legal Status of Women in England, was read on her behalf by Mary A. Ahrens. ==Personal life== She lived for most of her life with her parents in London until their deaths in the 1890s, and then with her sister Beatrice at Tulse Hill. She died in Streatham from heart failure. Her colleague Reina Lawrence was the executor and residuary beneficiary of Orme's will when she died in 1937. They may have had an intimate relationship, referred to as a “Boston marriage”. Orme was known to correspond with other female lawyers in the United States, as part of the Equity Club. ==See also== Cornelia Sorabji, first woman to take the Bachelor of Civil Laws exam at Oxford, in 1892 Gwyneth Bebb, died in 1921¹ before qualifying as a barrister Ivy Williams, first woman called to the English bar in 1922 ==References==

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