Rose Heilbron

Dame Rose Heilbron DBE QC (19 August 1914 – 8 December 2005) was an outstanding English barrister of the post-war period in the United Kingdom. Her career included many "firsts" for a woman - she was the first woman to win a scholarship to Gray's Inn, one of the first two women to be appointed King's Counsel in England, the first woman to lead in a murder case, the first woman Recorder, the first woman judge to sit at the Old Bailey, and the first woman Treasurer of Gray's Inn. She was also the second woman to be appointed a High Court judge, after Elizabeth Lane.

Heilbron was born in Liverpool, the daughter of a Jewish hotelier, Max Heilbron. She attended The Belvedere School and Liverpool University, where she became one of the first two women to gain a first class honours degree in law, in 1935. She was awarded the Lord Justice Holker scholarship at Gray's Inn in 1936, and she became one of only two women to hold a master of laws degree in 1937. Two years later she was called to the bar, and joined the Northern Circuit in 1940.

Heilbron practised mainly in personal injury and criminal law. Her rapid rise may have been aided by the fact that so many men were in the armed forces in World War II, during her first six years as a barrister.

She was junior counsel for the West Indian cricketer Learie Constantine in his case in 1944, Constantine v Imperial Hotels, after he was turned away from a hotel due to his colour. In 1946, in Adams v Naylor, she represented two boys injured in a minefield on the beach between Crosby and Southport in a claim against an army officer; the unsuccessful appeal to the House of Lords contributed to the Crown Proceedings Act 1947.

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