Today’s searching in old law books for references relevant to my mayhem project took me to a book, and an author, I’ve not encountered before (though he has made it onto HeinOnline, and was, apparently, the author of some other, cracking-sounding reads on agricultural holdings, land and contemporary criminal procedure): John Wynne Jeudwine (1852-1928).[i] He was a barrister, a fellow of the Royal Hist. Soc., and clearly had a sideline in law and history books. The one I was looking at was his Tort, Crime and Police in Mediaeval Britain (1917) (a snip at 6/- !). I picked it up on an open shelf, but it is in fact also there on archive.org.  It did have a little bit which will come in handy in relation to mayhem and the tort/crime borderline, but also some excruciating views about one of the big issues of the day – the possibility of women becoming barristers like him (p. 239 ff, stop before you get to police and clairvoyance …)

I suspect that our John thought himself quite a wit and stylist, and he came up with the following killer (and in no sense self-satisfied) argument about the issue:

1. Being a barrister (like him) is, like, super hard (Elle Woods would, later, get this so wrong)
2. Most men can’t do it, coz, like, you have to have a really good personality (like him)
3. Even fewer women would be able to do it, obvs, (‘not one in ten thousand’) because, like, to do that, they would have to have a weird, unwomanly, sort of personality (battleaxe, shrew, hag, etc., only really quiet?) ‘the rather hard, rather mediaeval [what??] temperament essential for the advocate [like him!]: a combination of courage, judgment and silence’. Those ladies! They can’t keep quiet, now can they?
4. So why not let them try? Might be a laugh, eh?
5. In any case, they could be useful for the rubbish bits of barristering, and go to the police court. There they could do things which ‘intimately concern’ women – bad mothering and having verminous children, and, it is implied rather than set out explicitly, being a ‘common prostitute’, soliciting etc. This would be good for them, and for the law, because, apparently, men didn’t know about women’s stuff and women don’t know about ‘the conditions attending a life of poverty’ (well, apart from the ones with vermnous children or being accused of soliciting, I suppose …). Excellent!
6. And obvs they shouldn’t have to wear a wig. [This is really important, and I am sure Helena Normanton and her sisters would have been glad to take up the suggestion that ‘[surely] their artistic sense [women are naturally artistic, innit?] could be trusted to design some academic headgear suitable to the woman lawyer…’ [I mean, wigs are stupid, but possibly better than a woman’s hat of that period would have been… think of the classic early women barrister pictures like this one without those wigs!).
7. Or charge the male going rate (the dears were not to be ‘tied down’ to charging the same as men – clearly that would be ridiculous!).

Sorted! Thanks Mr Jeudwine!

Wonder how he reacted to the entry into the profession of women. I suspect some of the trailblazers would have made mincemeat of him [when not suppressing a desire to talk loudly about the best design of hat, and how great it is not to have to get paid the same as other barristers!]

[i] Times, Tues 1^st Jan, 1929, p. 1.