Ethel Benjamin

Ethel Rebecca Benjamin, who lived from January 19, 1875, to October 14, 1943, was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, to an Orthodox Jewish family as the eldest of seven children, and became New Zealand's first female lawyer. She earned her LLB from the University of Otago in July 1897, and after New Zealand's Female Law Practitioners Act of 1896 allowed her admission to the Supreme Court of New Zealand on May 10, 1897, she went on, on September 17, 1897, to become the first woman in the British Empire to appear as counsel in court, arguing a debt recovery case; she was the second woman admitted as a barrister and solicitor anywhere in the British Empire, about two months behind Clara Brett Martin of Canada. She built a legal practice in Dunedin and later Wellington, and after her 1907 marriage her practice eventually extended to England, where she worked on cases involving spousal abuse, divorce, adoption and property matters, before her death in Northwood, Middlesex.