The Infanticide Act 1938 was one of two pieces of inter-war legislation that established, and refined, the offence of infanticide within the criminal law in England and Wales. Under the Act, where a woman was found to have been responsible … Read more
The Married Women’s Association (MWA) was the first pressure group of the twentieth century to demand, as its core focus, legal and economic equality for spouses. Formed in 1938, the MWA emphasised the language of equal partnership in marriage and … Read more
R v Bourne [1938] was a landmark case for defining grounds for abortion and therefore extending its legal availability to more women. The case under scrutiny – a termination performed on a girl of 14 who had been gang-raped – … Read more
The Matrimonial Causes Act 1937 extended the grounds for divorce so that both women and men could end their marriage on the basis of desertion or cruelty, in addition to the existing single ground of adultery. Section 2 provided that … Read more
The Law Reform (Married Women and Tortfeasors) Act 1935 is well known among tort lawyers for abolishing the common law rule denying one tortfeasor the right to claim a contribution to damages from another. However, it is equally important for … Read more
Stella Jane Thomas (1906-1974) was the first West African woman to be called to the Bar of England and Wales at the Middle Temple. Called on 10 May 1933, by 1935 she had returned to West Africa and registered as … Read more
Margaret Bondfield was a political trailblazer and a woman of many ‘firsts’. She was a founding member of the Adult Suffrage Society (ASS) in 1904 and the Women’s Labour League in 1906. She became the first female President of the … Read more
Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own was first published on 24 October 1929 and over the course of the following decades established itself as the ‘foundation stone’ of twentieth-century literary feminism. A hybrid text (part essay, part lecture, part … Read more
Section 1 of the Age of Marriage Act 1929 (1929 Act) stated that ‘A marriage between two persons either of whom is under the age of sixteen shall be void’. It created an equal age of consent to marriage for … Read more
The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 gave women the Parliamentary vote on the same terms as men for the first time. It removed the qualifications of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which had given women … Read more