Ada Evans

Ada Emily Evans (17 May 1872 – 27 December 1947), was an Australian lawyer and the first female law graduate in Australia.

Evans was born in Wanstead, England (then a town in Essex county, now a north-eastern suburb of London), the daughter of architect Henry Evans and his wife Louisa, who came from a family of lawyers. She attended school in the London suburb of Woodford, before her family moved to Sydney, New South Wales, Australia in 1883. There she attended Sydney Girls High School, and began her tertiary education at the University of Sydney, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1895. Following graduation, she intended to establish a school with her sister in the inner-western suburb of Summer Hill, but abandoned the project after a period of illness.

Later, encouraged by her mother Louisa, Evans enrolled again at the University of Sydney in 1899, this time in the Sydney Law School. Although the Dean of the school at the time, Pitt Cobbett, would by all accounts never have permitted a woman to enrol, he was absent overseas and Evans was able to enter the school. On his return, he declared to Evans "that she did not have the physique for law and would find medicine more suitable".

The rules of practice in force in New South Wales at the time did not comprehend female lawyers, and there was no precedent of women becoming lawyers; when Evans attempted to register as a student-at-law with the Supreme Court of New South Wales, her application was rejected. Although the rules of practice legislation did not actually disqualify women from becoming lawyers, the common law at the time held that unless legislation specifically conferred rights or privileges on women, it did not apply to them, for women were not included in the definition of persons. Despite these setbacks, Evans persisted with her studies, and on 26 December 1902 graduated with a Bachelor of Laws degree, the first woman in Australia to do so.

...
Wikipedia