With women poised to overtake men in the solicitors’ profession over the next few years, it is heartening to see that the four aspiring female lawyers who set the ball rolling back in 1913 were added to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography this week.

The Law Society did not permit women to sit its exams at that time, so the four brought an action against the Society in the name of one of their number, Gwyneth Marjory Bebb.

Though the legal action failed, it added to the momentum for reform which led to the ban being lifted in 1919 – though sadly Bebb died in childbirth in 1921 before she could complete her bar studies.

Maud Crofts, another member of the quartet, became the first woman to be articled to a solicitor in 1919 and obtained a practising certificate in 1923.