A Liverpool Exemplar - Dame Rose Heilbron

Dame Rose Heilbron was born in Liverpool on the 19th of August 1914, the daughter of a Jewish hotelier, Max Heilbron who assisted Jews who wanted to emigrate. She attended The Belvedere School, renamed Belvedere Preparatory School in 2010, and Liverpool University where she became one of the first two women to gain a first class honours degree in law, in 1935. She was also the first woman to win a scholarship to Gray's Inn, one of the first two women to be appointed King's Council in England, the first woman to lead in a murder case, the first woman Recorder, the first woman judge to sit at the Old Bailey and the first woman treasurer of Gray's Inn. Rose practised mainly in personal injury and criminal law and 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.

When the West Indian cricketer Learie Constantine was turned away from a hotel because of his colour in 1944 she acted as his junior counsel in the case of Constantione v Imperial Hotels. In 1946 she represented two boys injured in a minefield on the beach between Crosby and Southport in a claim against an army officer. The unsuccessful appeal going to the House of Lords contributed to the Crown Proceedings Act 1947.

Rose subsequently broke down many barriers with a string of firsts in the legal profession as she became a pioneer for women at the English Bar and for women generally, championing many women's causes in an era when it was not fashionable to do so. When aged just 34 in 1949, she was one of the first two female and the youngest Kings Counsel since 33 year old Thomas Erskine in 1783. She became something of a household name, especially in her home city, when, in 1949–50, she became the first woman to lead in a murder case, when she defended the gangster George Kelly, accused of shooting dead the deputy manager of the Cameo Cinema in Liverpool, which became known as 'The Cameo Murder'. Unable to save Kelly from being hung; the Court of Appeal quashed his conviction in 2003; she was still named 'Woman of the Year' by the Daily Mirror. When she appeared at the Old Bailey in 1951, defending Liverpool dockers accused of incitement to strike, the newspapers announced that she received £750 and £150 a day, then the highest brief fee paid to a woman. But it was well earned. The attorney general, Sir Hartley (later Lord) Shawcross, withdrew the case shortly before it was to go to the jury.

November 1956 saw her appointed as Recorder for Burnley, the first appointment of a woman as Recorder, although not the first time one had sat and in 1957 she was the first woman to sit as a Commissioner of Assize. She became leader of the Northern Circuit in 1973 and took charge of many criminal cases while presiding judge of the Northern Circuit (the first woman Presiding Judge of any Circuit from 1979 to 1982.

In 1975, the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, appointed her to chair a committee to consider reform of rape laws. The committee's subsequent report recommended that the identity of rape complainants should be kept secret, and that the defence should be limited in its ability to 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.

She had 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. Her hobbies included golf and walking, and she was a keen member of Soroptimist International, the worldwide organisation for women in management and professions, working to advance human rights and the status of women.

She retired from judicial office in 1988 and sadly died on December the 8th, 2005.

A biography, written by her daughter Hilary, also a barrister and Queen's Counsel, was published by Hart Publishing in 2012.

see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2020/08/a-liverpool-exemplar-william-gordon.html