Ida Coffin Duncan

Ida Coffin Duncan (b. circa 1893) was one of the first female barristers in England, receiving her call to the bar in January 19231, less than a year after Ivy Williams became the first woman to be called, and only a couple of months later than Helena Normanton, the first woman to actually practise as a barrister.

Ida’s father, Thomas John Duncan (b. circa 1859), was for years the secretary of the Stephen’s Green Club in Dublin (a gentlemen’s club founded by, among others, Daniel O’Connell). Thomas was the elder brother of George Duncan (b. circa 1862), who moved to England where he worked as a commercial clerk.2 George’s daughter Edith (b. circa 1894) married Maul, the son of Archibald John Richardson.

Thomas married the daughter of Kenneth Douglas Coffin, a British army officer who served in India in the 1860s. This daughter was probably Eliza Marian Coffin, born 14 April 1861 in Trichinopoly (now Tiruchirappalli), Tamil Nadu, India.3 No details of the marriage have been found, nor is it clear how the couple’s paths crossed.

They had at least two children. A daughter, Marian Isabelle Lottie Duncan, was born in around 1889, some four years before Ida. Thomas Duncan is described as a widower in the 1911 census of Ireland, so Eliza must have died some time between Ida’s birth date, around 1893, and 1911. At the time of the census, the family was living at 29 Northumberland Avenue, Kingstown, close to the port of Dun Laoghaire.4

Ida’s mother came from an old and very distinguished Anglo-American family. Their origins were apparently in the West Country, but a branch of the family emigrated to New England where they established (and apparently retain) a widespread presence. Ida’s great grandfather was Major General Isaac Campbell Coffin, who was born in 1801 on Nantucket, off the coast of Massachusetts. Many of the Coffins of Nantucket and elsewhere in New England seem to have been among those who stayed loyal to the king during the War of Independence, and many of them moved to England and served in the British armed forces.

Major General Coffin’s father, Francis Holmes Coffin, was an officer in the British navy, reaching the rank of rear admiral by the time he died on 10 April 1842.5 His older cousin and fellow rear admiral, Sir Isaac Coffin Bt., had been honoured for his service to the British during the War of Independence.6

Major General Coffin’s youngest son, Clifford Coffin, also attained the rank of Major General, and was awarded the Victoria Cross during the First World War battle of Passchendaele.7

Ida graduated from Trinity College, Dublin with a BA in Law in 1915. Already planning a career in the legal profession, she took some years out after graduating and took on work as a governess in France in order to build up the necessary financial resources. She later studied at the Middle Temple in London, taking her bar exams in 1922.8 After being called to the bar she moved into chambers at 7 King’s Bench Walk, later moving to 2 Paper Buildings, and later still to 4 Pump Court.9 She blazed the trail for other women barristers by being the first woman to argue a case in the Court of Criminal Appeal – and she won. She persuaded the court that the conviction of two men for burglary was unsafe because witnesses who identified them had previously been shown photographs of the men by the police. The Lord Chief Justice, presiding over the appeal, said that Ida had put the men’s case ‘with clearness and with force’.10

While Ida was busy hacking down the barriers that stood in the way of women who wanted to pursue a career in the law, her sister back in Ireland was pushing back the frontiers of an entirely different field of endeavour. Marian had developed a passion for motorcycle scrambling, making the news several times during the 1920s for her participation in events, often with the Ramblers Motorcycle and Light Car Club and usually riding an Enfield motorbike.11

Ida seems to have had an interest in the Coffin family story – and access to old papers belonging to the English branch of the family. In 1928 she was co-editor of a volume of letters written to Richard Coffin, of Portledge, Bideford, Devon, by his London agent, Richard Lapthorne, between 1687 and 1697.12

Meanwhile, Marian had moved away from Dublin and was in business in Ulster as a poultry breeder with a partner, the equally amply named Violet Charlotte Wood Fishbourne. Curiously enough, their address was Portledge Cottages, Hillsborough, Co Down. It seems certain that Marian had chosen the name in honour of her family seat. The pair made the newspapers in 1930 when they got into a dispute over the negligence of the removal men who transported their belongings from their previous premises in Co Wicklow.13

In 1931 Ida was appointed to serve as a commissioner on the Board of Control, which from 1913 onwards was the obscurer name given to what had previously been known as the Lunacy Commission.14 She was awarded an OBE in 1959 for this work.15

By 1933, Marian was back in Dublin, and once again at the centre of legal proceedings. A newspaper report ran as follows: ‘Thos. Whelan, Walsh Rd., charged with obtaining, by false pretences, 5s. from Charles J. Wade, Shandon Park, and 10s. from Miss Marion [sic] Duncan, Drumcondra Park, was discharged on bail, and on the undertaking of his father to repay the money.’16

Thomas Duncan lived on into his nineties. He was still active in the local Dun Laoghaire community in the late 1940s, when he is listed among the mourners at the funeral of Lt Cdr Richard Sheil, the Dun Laoghaire harbour master, in 1948. He would have been about 89.17

Ida died on 20 April 197518 and left little noticeable impression on the world, having been omitted from Who’s Who during her lifetime and apparently going unnoticed by the obituary writers of the major newspapers after she was dead. Ida never married (nor, it seems probable, did Marian) and, apart from her memorable debut in the Court of Appeal, does not seem to have had a hand in any legal cases notable (or notorious) enough to find their way into the mainstream press. But reading between the lines of the sketchy information we have about her, it seems clear that she started out in life with an independent and bold spirit, and was determined from her teenage years to pursue a career in the legal profession. For a young woman in the years before World War One, when the door to such a career was firmly closed in the face of women, that was a courageous choice.

Thanks to Hugh Richardson for providing some of the information on this page.

  1. Irish Independent, 29 January 1923, p. 4. [↩]
  2. 1881 UK census, RG 11/299. [↩]
  3. See Families In British India Society, http://www.fibis.org; Parish register transcripts from the Presidency of Madras, 1698-1948, http://www.familysearch.org, Source Call No. 0521851 V. 41-42. [↩]
  4. National Archives of Ireland, Census 1911. http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Dublin/Kingstown_No__2/Northumberland_Avenue/95315. [↩]
  5. National Archives, ADM 45/15/518. [↩]
  6. Thomas C. Amory, The Life of Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, Baronet (Boston: Cupples, Upham and Co., 1886). [↩]
  7. http://www.remuseum.org.uk/vc/rem_vc_coffin.htm [↩]
  8. The Times, 15 June 1922, p. 8; 2 November 1922, p. 5. [↩]
  9. London telephone directories. 4 Pump Court was her address at the time of her death. [↩]
  10. The Times, 2 December 1924, p. 6. [↩]
  11. See, for example, Freeman’s Journal, 17 November 1924, p. 3. [↩]
  12. Russell J. Kerr and Ida Coffin Duncan (eds), The Portledge Papers (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928). [↩]
  13. Irish Independent, 17 July 1930, p. 6. [↩]
  14. The London Gazette, 6 February 1931, p. 846; The Lunacy Commission: a Study of its Origin, Emergence and Character, http://www.mdx.ac.uk/WWW/STUDY/1.HTM. [↩]
  15. The London Gazette, 5 June 1959, p. 3709. [↩]
  16. Irish Independent, 13 November 1933, p. 10. [↩]
  17. Irish Independent, 7 July 1948, p.2. [↩]
  18. London Gazette, 22 May 1975. [↩]