Gwyneth Bebb

Gwyneth Bebb
Born	December, 1889 Oxford, England
Died	9 October 1921 Edgbaston, England
Nationality	British

Gwyneth Marjorie Bebb (27 October 1889 - 9 October 1921) (later Mrs Thompson) was an English lawyer. She was the plaintiff in Bebb v. The Law Society, a test case in the opening of the legal profession to women in Britain. She was expected to be the first woman to be called to the bar in England; in the event, her early death prevented that, and Ivy Williams was the first woman to qualify as a barrister in England, in May 1922.

Bebb was born in Oxford. She was the third of seven children of Llewellyn John Montford Bebb, a fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. Her mother, Louisa Marion (née Traer), was the daughter of the obstetrician James Reeves Traer. She moved to Wales with her family after her father was appointed principal of St David's College, Lampeter in 1898.

She was educated at St Mary's School in Paddington, London (which later became St Mary's College, Lancaster Gate, before moving to Gerrards Cross) and then studied jurisprudence at St Hugh's College, Oxford from 1908. She was the sixth woman to study law at Oxford: her predecessors included Cornelia Sorabji and Ivy Williams. She graduated with first-class marks in 1911, but at that time women were not awarded degrees or allowed to graduate.

She became an investigating officer for the Board of Trade.

In 1913 she and three other women started an unsuccessful legal action, known as Bebb vs. the Law Society, claiming that the Law Society should be compelled to admit them to its preliminary examinations. The three other women were Maud Crofts, Karin Costelloe, who became a psychoanalyst after marrying Adrian Stephen (brother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell), and Lucy Nettlefold.

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