Sybil Campbell

Sybil Campbell OBE (1889 – 29 August 1977) was the first woman to be appointed as a stipendiary magistrate in Britain when she became metropolitan police magistrate at Tower Bridge Magistrate's Court in 1945. She was thus the first woman to be a professional magistrate or judge in Britain, and remained the only full-time woman magistrate or judge in England until her retirement in 1961 and the appointment of Elizabeth Lane as a county court judge in 1962.

Campbell was born in Ceylon, where her father was an agent of a tea company, but she had family roots in Argyll. Her maternal grandfather was Sir William Bovill, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, who presided at the long-running Tichborne case. She was educated at home and then from the age of 13 at a school in North Berwick. She studied Natural Sciences and Economics at Girton College, Cambridge from 1908, after some preparatory study in Paris and Edinburgh.

She was an investigating officer with the Trade Boards from 1913 to 1918, and an enforcement officer with the Ministry of Food in the First World War. After the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 removed barriers on women becoming barristers and solicitors, Ivy Williams was the first woman to be called to the bar in England, at the Inner Temple in May 1922. Campbell joined the Middle Temple in 1920, and was one of ten women called to the bar at Middle Temple on 17 November 1922.

She practised as a barrister in the chambers of H. H. Joy, and returned to the Ministry of Food as an Enforcement Officer in London in the Second World War. For this work, she was appointed as an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1942.

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