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In a letter to the Editor of the Times dated 19 September 1919, and headlined ‘LOCKING UP JURIES – AN INCONVENIENT PRACTICE’, one Harry B Poland noted that ‘the inconvenience to the jury is on some occasions very serious indeed. As soon as it is known that the case must last more than one day, the jurymen who have been sworn to try the case have to send to their homes for their necessary apparel. In Palmer’s case, the trial lasted 12 days and the Staunton case 10 days so that juries were locked up over a Sunday. Consider what this means to many of the jurymen.’

Then Poland – actually the venerable Sir Harry Bodkin Poland KC, a veteran of 72 years at the bar and author of many a distinguished legal tome, including the lip-smackingly titled Criminal Appeal Bill (1906) Examined – opined, ‘Suppose the Lord Chancellor’s Bill to qualify women as jurors passes Parliament, and suppose a case of murder is tried by six men and six women, they cannot very well be locked up together for the night; so a male bailiff will be wanted to look after the men and a female bailiff to look after the women, or perhaps only one woman.’

A knotty problem indeed, as outlined by Sir Harry, then aged 90, a former Recorder of Dover. He was succeeded in his post by his nephew, the even more distinguished Sir Archibald Bodkin KCB, a prosecutor in the Roger Casement treason trial and ‘Brides in the Bath’ murder case before becoming, in 1920, Director of Public Prosecutions. In that office for ten years, he became the scourge, in particular, of ‘filth and obscenity’ in literature. Particularly obsessed with lesbianism in literature – ‘those wicked women, as I deem them’ – he successfully launched a crusade against a well-known ‘lesbian’ trailblazer at the time, Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, which was successfully prosecuted in 1928 and, as a result, remained generally unavailable in the UK for another 20 years.

Uncle Harry’s own distaff concerns, meanwhile, were compounded just three months after his heartfelt Times missive with the Royal Assent, on 23 December 1919, of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act. This followed the passing a year earlier of the Representation of the People Act, which had granted women a limited right to vote after a long and sometimes violent struggle for suffrage. Section 1 of the subsequent 1919 Act stated in a typically pedantic, albeit ground-breaking, way: ‘A person shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from the exercise of any public function or from being appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office or post, or from entering or assuming or carrying on any civil profession or vocation, or for admission to any incorporated society (whether incorporated by Royal Charter or otherwise), [and a person shall not be exempted by sex or marriage from the liability to serve as a juror].’

Six months later, in a short report dated 28 July 1920, the New York Times screamed: ‘FIRST WOMEN APPEAR ON JURY IN ENGLAND’ with the intriguing strap-line, ‘Sit Through Six Cases, Then Two Asked to be Excused to Attend to Home Duties’. The story, filed by the Associated Press, noted: ‘The prosecuting Counsel in addressing the jury departed from the time worn “Gentlemen of the jury”, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury”. The new phrase caused a murmur throughout the court. The Counsel congratulated the women jurors for “at last taking their proper place in the administration of justice in England”. He added that the cause of justice also was to be congratulated.’

The Counsel in question was Mr RE Dummett and the venue for this historic legal ‘first’ was Bristol Quarter Sessions. There, the jury heard the case against William Henry Ayton, 52, a dock labourer, for stealing parcels at Weston-super-Mare Station. It consisted of six men and six women, the latter drawn from a pool including at least three milliners, a draper, tobacconist and hat manufacturer.

In its report of the trial, the Daily Mail, before dealing with the actual proceedings, helpfully reminded its readers about the actual prerequisites for being a woman juror. She ‘must be between the ages of 21 and 65, a householder assessed (in the provinces) at not less than £20 a year, the occupier of a house with not less than 15 windows, and a natural-born subject or an alien of not less than ten years’ domicile.’ Or, as the Times would put it, rather more succinctly, ‘drawn from the middle classes’.

The enormity of the occasion, however, didn’t stop two of the selected women jurors at the start of proceedings from expressing some initial concern about their pioneering duties to the Recorder, Dr W Blake Odgers KC. One told him she was concerned about her children whom she had had to leave at home, while another explained she had had to close her shop while she was in Court. Those comments duly noted, after which Mr Dummett then opened the case for the Prosecution against Ayton with: ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury – this is the first occasion on which I have used this unfamiliar phrase. As far as I know, it has not been used before in the annals of the jurisdiction in this country, certainly not in this city …’ Ayton, who, the Court was told, ‘had given way to drink, for which he had a weakness’, was duly found guilty and sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment.

On this momentous day, the evenly mixed jury also heard cases against a 31-year-old riveter accused of indecently assaulting two girls at Clifton, a teenager charged with breaking and entering and stealing (including three cigarettes), and a man aged 33 accused of stealing a motorbike. At the end of the sitting, some of the women asked to be excused from further duties ‘on account of domestic and business ties’. Their request was granted.

Others, however, volunteered to stay on during the whole session. At the end of its report, the Daily Mail, beneath the strapline ‘Census of Women Jurors’, revealed that ‘assistant overseers throughout the kingdom have received instructions to prepare by September a list of men and women competent to sit on juries. “It’s been difficult enough to get women on the voters’ lists, but it will be more difficult to get their ages for a jury list,” said an assistant overseer yesterday.’

Where Bristol led, so the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey would follow, one might suggest belatedly, half a year later when, at its January Sessions, no fewer than 50 women were summoned – apparently, the majority from Hampstead – to serve. Their empanelling took place, as was the custom, in the Court of the Common Serjeant – the Old Bailey’s second most senior permanent Judge. He was none other than Henry (later Sir Henry) Fielding Dickens KC, eighth of ten children to Charles Dickens, then in the fourth of 15 years in that prestigious law office.

In a scene that would have been worthy of one of his father’s vivid literary portraits of tangled legal life, Dickens Jr found himself presiding for some hours over the ceremony. This was because, as the Times of 12 January 1921 under the headline ‘NERVOUS WOMEN JURORS’ reported, ‘many women sought to be excused’. The first lady called asked to be released on the grounds that she was unable to leave her 83-year-old mother. The fourth was excused because she had no one to look after her tobacconist business. When another woman’s name was called, her daughter came forward and said that her mother was 80, and others were also excused on the grounds of age. Dickens told a woman of 61 that 65 was the age limit, but he released her for reasons of ill health. Then, reported the Times, there was the following exchange:

Woman juror: ‘I am so awfully nervous I don’t think I am suitable.’

The Common Serjeant: ‘We are all more or less nervous.’

Woman juror: ‘I should feel most grateful if you could excuse me.’

The Common Serjeant: ‘Don’t you think you could sit quietly in that box and listen? There is not much to make you nervous. You won’t be cross-examined there, you know. [Laughter.] If I accepted your excuse I don’t think I should get any ladies at all.’

Woman juror: ‘I am sure there are numbers who would enjoy it …’

The Common Serjeant: ‘Who are more strong-minded than yourself?’

Woman juror: ‘Yes.’

She was excused. Next was a woman who wished to be stood down because she claimed she had to look after her workpeople in a factory. Dickens told her it was her ‘public duty’ to let her work stand aside for a time. ‘If people were excluded simply because they are employers of labour, we should hardly get a jury at all. Perhaps you would like to serve later?’ To which she retorted, much to the court’s merriment, ‘Well, if I have got to serve, I would rather serve now.’ In all, about half of the originally summoned 50 were finally excused.

According to the Manchester Guardian: ‘One of the more experienced women before going into court said that she did not expect to like the work, but she thought it was very necessary that women should take their share in public life and in all civic duties. She believed, too, that the presence of women on juries would result in greater care being taken in cases where women were concerned. Some cases would be very unpleasant, but men had not shirked their duties and women must equally show a public spirit.’

The first mixed Old Bailey jury comprised just two women who, noted the Manchester Guardian, took the oath in voices ‘clear and steady’. They sat in the more senior Recorder’s Court and tried two cases, each one resulting in an acquittal. In Dickens’ court, just one woman was selected for jury service that day, the splendidly named Mrs Taylor Bumstead, who, befitting her formidable moniker, was made ‘Forewoman’. She was also involved in two cases, the first concerning two Danes who were charged with shooting at a policeman and acquitted; the second involved a man charged with wounding his wife. He was convicted and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in the second division, a legal classification from 1898 which avoided hard labour.

Talking to the Times after the cases, Mrs Bumstead said she had found her experience ‘extremely interesting’, adding, ‘I was sorry that the man in the second case was sent to prison, but I was glad it was in the second division so that he does not lose his pension. I thought the police officer very humane in speaking up for him as he did.’ Apparently a veteran of public life, she also concluded boldly, ‘Women jurors should be provided with refreshment during the day or their expenses should be refunded. It cost me 6s today for expenses and, as I am to be here for seven days, it looks as if my first experience as a juror will prove somewhat expensive to me.’

It’s perhaps interesting to note that, while the Recorder and his Clerk used the address ‘Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury’ in their court, the Common Serjeant and his Clerk settled for the simpler ‘Members of the jury’.

Out in the shires, the novelty continued to confuse. At Huntingdon Assizes, where three women were serving, Captain Falcon MP, who was appearing in a case, began by addressing the jury as ‘Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury’ only to be swiftly admonished by the Judge, who told him that ‘Members of the jury’ was the ‘proper form of address’, before adding tartly, ‘You’re not making an after-dinner speech!’

A day after the Old Bailey bastion was breached, and a day before Bailey’s trial was due to begin at Aylesbury, presided over by Mr Justice McCardie, Punch, the weekly magazine of humour and satire, decided to cash in on the novelty of women jurors with a poem called ‘Trial by Jury – New Style’ in its Miscellany column, Charivari, following this preamble, or news ‘hook’: ‘During the hearing of a recent case, one of the jury produced her knitting in the box. If this thing is done in open court, the poet trembles to think what may happen when the jury retires to consider their verdict.’ The poem ran as follows:

‘’Tis time,’ the foreman said, ‘to weigh

The question of his guilt;

The case to me, I’m bound to say.

Seems proven to the hilt.’

But mid the twelve true souls and good

One spoke in doubting strain:

‘The question puzzling me is should

The next be purl or plain.’

In such a complicated key

Her pattern had been planned

The case was one that could not be

Decided out of hand;

For many an hour they sought in vain

Its mystery to unfurl

For six said ‘Guilty,’ four said ‘Plain’

And two stuck out for ‘Purl.’

The Judge sent out to ask them if

His light on some dark spot

Would help them: with a scornful sniff

They answered it would not;

And, though the felon’s guilt was black

(Past doubt he did the deed)

They had at last to put him back –

The jury disagreed.

If this all sounds just faintly patronising, then Punch would go at least some way to rectifying the matter exactly a week later, in its 19 January edition, with a very respectful full-length cartoon drawn by Bernard Partridge, one of its more distinguished contributors. Entitled ‘The Chief’s Last Charge’, it depicted ‘The New Viceroy of India (the departing Lord Chief Justice, Rufus Isaacs, Earl of Reading) saying to ‘the New Juror’, an elegantly clad and fashionably hatted woman, ‘Madam. I could not leave the cause of justice in fairer hands.’

Just over a week later, when you might have thought the novelty had worn off, the courts and newspaper columns were once again full of concern about mixed juries. It seems that no sooner had Mr Justice McCardie come away from his assignment in Aylesbury than he was pontificating on the subject at Leicester Assizes in a case of alleged rape where three women jurors had been challenged by the Counsel for the Defence. The Times reported on 28 January, ‘[he] said his reason was that a case of this kind should be tried by a jury of either all men or all women. There were unpleasant details which could not frankly be discussed by a mixed jury.’

His Lordship clearly had much sympathy with the objection and said he was glad Counsel had mounted the challenge. ‘Women jurors must retire, but there was no reflection as to their capacity.’ He thought the time was near ‘when Parliament must consider whether a mixed jury was the best tribunal to try a case where, if a proper decision were to be arrived at, there was involved full and frank discussion of many intimate sexual details.’ He then, concluded the report, ‘assured the women that there was no other ground for objecting to them’.

If trying a case of alleged rape wasn’t bad enough, then having a mixed jury – or women jurors period, for that matter – subjected to the shocking vagaries of the Divorce Court would seem positively beyond the pale judging by an extraordinary correspondence that then ensued across several days in the Times following some controversial cross-suits in that division of the High Court.

Writing from the Garrick Club, Lt Col CP Hawkes spluttered, ‘That women, presumably of refined feelings and sensibilities, should be compulsorily and publicly subjected to the revelation of the most revolting and degrading indecencies as a necessary part of a public duty which the majority of them neither desired not demanded, cannot seriously have been contemplated even by our enlightened Legislature.’

Calling himself ‘a Barrister’, another wrote, even more intemperately, ‘It is revolting that women should now be obliged to discuss, when considering their verdict, with members of the opposite sex who are total strangers to them, certain matters which no decent woman would for one moment think of mentioning even to her husband.’

He then added, ‘It may be urged that, as women demanded the vote, they must, therefore, accept all the responsibilities which enfranchisement entails. It must, however, be remembered that women were not consulted as a whole on the subject, and were they consulted today I have little doubt there would be a great majority against jury service at all events in the [Divorce and Criminal] Courts I have mentioned.’ It was nothing less than ‘a blot on the administration of justice’, which, he concluded, should be hastily removed.

His assumption about women and their alleged view of jury service would seem at the very least condescending until one then read, three days later, a flurry of letters, which assuming their veracity appeared to give him some credence. ‘I know a great deal about my sister-voters who are labouring day after day, cooking, sweeping, dusting and ironing that they may stand between their men folk and discomforts in the home,’ declared ‘Home-working woman’, who continued in a similar vein: ‘They recognise the truth that though women are gifted in many ways, they are not just, that they lack knowledge of the law, and that some are ignorant of sin and crime. These women look to their men folk to stand between them and the discomforts of such tasks as serving upon a jury.’

She then urged an amendment of the Act, ‘so worded that no woman need serve on a jury against her will’. Her plea was underscored by ‘Mother of eight’ who beseeched, ‘We ask at least to have all compulsion done away with, and we appeal to men to do this for us. All down the ages we have looked to men to protect us; surely they will not fail us now?’

However, when it seemed that the cause of women’s suffrage had been done irreparable damage by these oddly revisionist outbursts, there was by way of counterpoint a considerably saner summation by Mrs JH Woodward, who wrote, almost philosophically, ‘To have the vote, to act on juries, to enter the Bar – all this is only of value if it is to be the means to one end, and that is a purer life – a more healthy because a more moral country.’

Yet, just a week before this fracas came news from the States that would, and should, surely have been food for thought – the first criminal trial in America presided over by a woman Judge. In Cleveland Ohio, the New York Herald reported that Justice Florence Allen passed a sentence of life imprisonment on Robert Comens for ‘murder in the second degree’ after a trial – almost contemporaneous with proceedings at Aylesbury – that had included three women on the jury. Two of them had pleaded to be excused from duty because of their husbands’ objections and the demands of their children. ‘Justice Allen, a spinster,’ wrote the New York Herald, ‘declared, however, that the existence of husbands and children was no excuse.’

In the mother country, though, it would take another 40 years for the first female Judge to be appointed – Elizabeth Lane to the County Court in 1962 – and another ten years after that for Rose Heilbron to become the first female Judge to preside at the Old Bailey, on 4 January 1972.

Meanwhile, on the morning of 13 January 1921, Miss Maud Sophia Stevenson, Miss Annie Anderson White and Miss Matilda Polly Tack were creating their own significant piece of English legal history when they first stepped into the jury box at Bucks Assizes.