Name Eliza Orme | Died 1937 | |
Eliza Orme (25 December 1848 - 22 June 1937) was the first woman to earn a law degree in England, receiving a LLB from University College London in 1888.
Orme was born in London, into a well-connected middle-class family. She was educated at Bedford College for Women, and attended lectures at University College London from 1871. Before the passing of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, women were not permitted to qualify as a barrister or a solicitor in England; indeed, women were permitted to study but not to graduate at many universities.
Orme worked in the chambers of a barrister, John Savill Vaizey, from 1873, but her aspiration to be recognised as a "conveyancer under the bar" was blocked. She established an office on Chancery Lane in 1875 with a friend Mary Richardson, and worked as a "devil", drafting documents for conveyancing counsel and patent agents. From the mid-1880s, she worked with Reina Emily Lawrence, continuing to work on legal matters until about 1904.
Orme was also active in Liberal Party politics and as a feminnist. She was involved with the National Society for Women's Suffrage and the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women, and assisted the Royal Commission on labour in 1892. She was also involved with the Women's Liberal Federation from 1887, leaving to join its rival Women's National Liberal Federation in 1892.
She lived for most of her life with her parents in London until their deaths in the 1890s, and then with her sister Beatrice at Tulse Hill. She died in Streatham.
In 1902, she wrote the entry for the Dictionary of National Biography for Samuel Plimsoll.[1]