In Search of Equal Citizenship: the campaign for women magistrates in England and Wales, 1910-1939

In early 1920 women in England and Wales sat as Justices of the Peace (JPs) for the first time, becoming the first women to have any formal role in the country's law courts. Less than thirty years later nearly a quarter of JPs were women, a proportion unparalleled in any other activity of civic and public life other than voting. Yet the legislation that admitted women to the magisterial bench-the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act-is usually pronounced a failure by historians. This article argues that the appointment of so many women to the magisterial bench in a relatively short period of time was a success for the women's movement and that it was due very largely to the agency of some of the early women magistrates themselves and the efforts of the organisations to which they belonged, albeit working with the grain of reform in the criminal justice system. The article also maps the campaigners' use of the twin concepts of 'rights' and 'duties' within their overall project for the advancement of equal citizenship.