Rose Heilbron

Rose Heilbron, who lived from 1914 to 2005, was an English barrister and judge born in Liverpool to a Jewish hotelier, Max Heilbron. She became the first woman to gain a first-class honors degree in law from the University of Liverpool and the first woman to win a scholarship to Gray's Inn, was called to the bar in 1939, and joined the Northern Circuit in 1940, building a practice chiefly in personal injury and criminal defense work. In 1949 she and Helena Normanton became the first two women appointed King's Counsel in England, and at thirty-four she became the youngest King's Counsel since Thomas Erskine had been appointed at thirty-three in 1783. She went on to become the first woman to lead a murder case, the first female recorder, and in 1956 the first woman judge to sit at the Old Bailey. In 1974 she became the second woman appointed a High Court judge, after Elizabeth Lane, serving in the Family Division until 1988, and she later became the first female treasurer of Gray's Inn.