A Poor Woman’s Lawyer? Feminism, the labour movement, and working-class women’s access to the law in England, 1890-1935

Women were excluded from both branches of the legal profession before the Sex Discrimination (Removal) Act 1919. Whilst campaigning for women’s entry to the law was an end in itself, it was also part of wider efforts to make the law more accessible to all. Before and after the 1919 Act, middle- and upper-class women were able to offer legal advice and case work to working-class women, by making use of both feminist and trade unionist networks and the professions that were open to them – factory inspection and social work. Through examination of the work of the Women’s Industrial Council, the Women’s Trade Union League and the Young Women’s Christian Association between the 1890s and 1930s, we trace the development of work to both educate women and girls on their legal rights and to directly tackle problems and breaches of the law. We argue that, by looking at the legal activism of women in the factory inspectorate, social work, trade union and women’s organisations, fresh insight into the development and ‘mainstreaming’ of working-class claims on citizenship in the early twentieth century can be found.