Law Students Benefit from Barrister's Bequest

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A protest about government policy on tuition fees by about 30 people prevented Wednesday's Chancellors Society Dinner from taking place. The dinner was being held to raise money to fund scholarships for disabled young people in East and West Sussex. It has now been postponed until a later date.

Lawyer Cherie Booth QC had accepted Lord Attenborough's personal invitation to be guest speaker at the event. She had been due to talk about the challenges facing women who go into professional careers today and has kindly agreed to do so when the dinner is rescheduled.The occasion was an opportunity to commemorate Mrs Helena Normanton QC, the first woman to practise at the English Bar, and to mark the opening of the School of Legal Studies, which has benefited from a bequest that Mrs Normanton left to the University.

Income from the Normanton bequest is being used to support founding scholarships in the new School, which was formed in August this year.In her will, Mrs Normanton left £20,000-worth of shares in a trust to her niece Elsie Cannon, who died in January 1999. The share portfolio, by now valued in excess of £400,000, then passed to Sussex. Mrs Normanton's will records that her bequest to the University was made "in gratitude for all that Brighton did to educate me".

Research by postgraduate student Jo Workman has revealed that Helena Normanton moved to Brighton in 1886, when she was four, and attended York Place school (now Varndean) from the age of 14. Jo, who has just finished an MA in Contemporary History at Sussex, discovered that Mrs Normanton initially trained as a teacher. She was not admitted as a member of the Middle Temple until 1919, by which time she was in her late 30s. In 1922 she was called to the Bar and was the first woman to practise as a barrister, notably in the Old Bailey.Although she lived in Bloomsbury with her husband, accountant Gavin Clark, Mrs Normanton maintained her links with the Brighton area. In 1956 a fund was established to create a new university in Sussex. Helena Normanton was the first recorded donor to the fund, with a gift made to Brighton's Director of Education at the time, William Stone.She died in October 1957 and is buried with her husband in Ovingdean churchyard.

Today her only surviving relatives are distant cousins, who live in Sussex. "The barrister was a very, very strong woman", said 79-year-old Mrs Sybil Foard, who lives in Hove. "She attracted a lot of attention wherever she went. Helena was a social commentator of her time and has paved the way for thousands of women to have a right to stand at the Bar."Jo Workman agrees: "Helena had a strong desire to see women recognised as individuals who had an equal right with men to actively participate in all facets of life. She invested an enormous amount of energy in working to remove prejudices against women."