January 4: England’s Perry Mason

Rose Heilbron, one of Great Britain’s best-known barristers and judges, became the first woman jurist to sit at London’s Old Bailey, the central criminal court of England and Wales, on this date in 1972. Heilbron’s other “firsts” included being the first woman appointed King’s or Queen’s Counsel (1949), the first to lead in a murder case, and the first woman Recorder (the highest legal officer of a particular region). Heilbron gained national fame as a young woman in the 1940s and ’50s in a series of murder cases in which she gained acquittals or avoided capital punishment for her defendants. “Her qualities included a crystal-clear mind and a fine incisive voice,” wrote the Telegraph in her 2005 obituary. “She was also a tremendous fighter and a prodigiously hard worker . . . Her tenacity enabled her to dominate the courtroom, in spite of her quiet demeanor, which put some in mind of a housewife.” In 1975, she led a successful effort to reform Great Britain’s rape laws by protecting the identities of complainants and limiting the investigation of their sexual histories. “The fact that a girl from Liverpool could become a QC and high court judge played a big part in my decision to go into law. She was an inspiration for me and countless other women of my generation.” —Cherie Blair