On 29 July 1920, The Times reported that ‘Women jurors were empaneled for the first time at the Bristol Quarter Sessions yesterday’. A jury of six women and six men had ‘adjudicated on six cases’. Prosecuting counsel used the
unfamiliar phrase ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury’. As far as he knew it had not been used before in the annals of the jurisdiction of this country. He congratulated women on at last taking their proper place in the jurisdiction of the country, and also congratulated the cause of justice that they had done so.
Women had now served on a jury in England for the first time since their categorical exclusion from the jury box had been brought to a close by the passage of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, seven months earlier. The rules left the men selecting juries a great deal of discretion regarding the qualified people who would actually serve; and it is significant that the jury that was empaneled on this occasion comprised six women and six men. There was a symbolic equality here, but it was an equality that did not survive in the jury system for very long.
The full version of this landmark is written by Kay Crosby.