Mrs Elsy Borders brought the first legal challenge to the unregulated collaboration between speculative house-builders and building societies that allowed the sale of thousands of homes of poor quality and defective workmanship to borrowers who had no redress. Her case led to the Building Societies Act 1939 which regulated some of the worst practices (though by no means all of them). It was the first of several struggles in the twentieth century to get mortgage lenders to take women’s interests seriously.
The full version of this landmark is written by Rosemary Auchmuty.