Path-breaking British Jurist Dame Rose Heilbron Dies at 91

The Telegraph reports that Dame Rose Heilbron, path-breaking British barrister and jurist, has died at the age of 91. Dame Rose was "one of the most celebrated defence barristers of the post-war years; no woman before her enjoyed anything like her success rate at the criminal Bar, and she later

became only the second woman to be appointed a High Court judge."

She won her first murder acquittal in 1946, at the age of 29.

When the bookie Jack "Spot" Comer was found not guilty of stabbing a man in Soho in 1955, he said to reporters gathered outside the Old Bailey: "If you want something to write about, write about Rose Heilbron. She's the greatest lawyer in history."

Her qualities included a crystal-clear mind and a fine incisive voice. She was also a tremendous fighter and a prodigiously hard worker, willing to toil around the clock on difficult cases. Her advocacy was sometimes unorthodox but always eloquent. Her tenacity enabled her to dominate the courtroom, in spite of her quiet demeanour, which put some in mind of a housewife.

The Telegraph suggests that because she was a woman she was shunted into the Family Division, rather than to the Queen's Bench Division - "where her vast experience as a criminal practitioner could best have been put to use presiding over major criminal trials." However, Dame Rose's warmth and common sense made her enormously successful, notably in presiding in cases involving children, and her career on the bench was distinguished.

Dame Rose also made numerous contributions to developing the law of rape and abortion in England. Read all about it here.

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