WOMAN BARRISTER.

FIRST CALL TO THE BAR.

Austerity and dignified ceremonial, observance of quaint old customs, and the dissipation of it all in noise when the Masters of the Bench have retired to sip their port, are the characteristics of any call night. The legal Inns differ in minor ways in their observances. It fell to Inner Temple last night to make what will be an historic “call.” Law has been the subject of growth from times so remote that any starting point it is impossible to fix, and the English Inns are themselves of an antiquity that none can measure with accuracy; but never since the foundation of the earliest of them have they given to a woman learned in the law the privilege to practise at the Bar. Dr. Ivy Williams, of Oxford, last night received her call, and thus becomes the first English woman barrister.

So there was just the stir of pleasant curiosity in the quiet courts of the Temple last evening when the “panyer” made his accustomed round of them, blowing his ox-horn as a call to barristers and students to dinner. Inner Temple gives its call, not in hall, where hundreds can be present, counting parents, cousins, and aunts, who in Middle Temple on such occasions find accommodation in the minstrels’ gallery, but in privacy. To the Parliament Room, when the Benchers have retired there after dinner, the newly-fledged barristers are summoned, and the Benchers, and these alone, know what takes place. Wigs are not worn. Regulation decreed last night that Miss Williams should appear attired in the simplicity of woman’s evening dress.

A few who in curiosity lingered about the open door that admitted the company to dinner felt just a shade disappointed. Mr. Henry Fielding Dickens, K.C., the Common Serjeant, is this year’s Treasurer of Inner Temple. It fell to him to address the new barristers, and with the customary welcome to them and discourse upon the responsibilities and privileges of their chosen profession, no doubt he took occasion to refer to the admission of women, but what he said it is not etiquette to disclose.

THE SARTORIAL QUESTION.

Miss Williams owes the precedence of her call to the fact that she was awarded a certificate of honour at her examination. The new barristers are marshalled in seniority, honours coming first, and as senior student it became Miss Williams’s privilege to head the body, and, what is more – an ordeal very trying to the nervous – to express, in her first speech as a barrister, their acknowledgments for the Treasurer’s address. She is a tall, dark woman, the daughter of Mr. George St. Swithin Williams, an Oxford solicitor.

The great sartorial question was decided by a committee of judges. They decreed what women barristers should wear in the courts. The black cap of the Continental bar was ruled out, and women, like men, will assume the white and curled horsehair wig. They adopt, too, the bands, or neck-piece. They have the stuff gown. It must be worn over a dark dress, which is to be high at the neck, and long enough to show below the gown. Dignity of the profession disapproves both “V’s” and abbreviated skirts. Mr. Justice Clavel Salter sat as chairman of the committee on this important point of law, and it is but just to assume that the judges’ wives had some say upon the choice of attire, at least in the way of advice.

Although Miss Williams is herself reticent in statement, it is understood that she does not at present intend to practise at the Bar, though briefs no doubt will be offered to her.