Ethel Rebecca Benjamin was New Zealand's first female lawyer.
13 Facts About Ethel Benjamin
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Ethel Benjamin was the second woman in the Empire to be admitted as a barrister and solicitor, two months after Clara Brett Martin of Canada.
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Ethel Benjamin was the eldest in a family of five girls and two boys.
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Ethel Benjamin attended Otago Girls' High School from 1883 to 1892.
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In 1892 Ethel Benjamin won a university scholarship, and in 1893 she enrolled at the University of Otago for an LLB degree, not knowing if she would be able to practice law on completion:.
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Ethel Benjamin graduated in July 1897, having achieved outstanding marks in her course.
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Ethel Benjamin represented several hotels and publicans' associations on matters related to prohibition - she was one of the few nineteenth-century New Zealand feminists who didn't support temperance.
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Ethel Benjamin was a founding member of the Dunedin branch of the New Zealand Society for the Protection of Women and Children and was its honorary solicitor.
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In 1906 Ethel Benjamin moved to Christchurch and managed a restaurant at the International Exhibition.
10.
Ethel Benjamin married Alfred Mark Ralph De Costa, a Wellington sharebroker, in 1907, and moved to live with him in Wellington.
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Ethel Benjamin continued her legal practice, in an office adjacent to her husband's, and began to specialise in property speculation.
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Alfred died just before the Second World War started, but Ethel Benjamin continued to work as a lawyer in London.
13.
Ethel Benjamin was accidentally struck by a motor vehicle, and died of a fractured skull at Mount Vernon Hospital in Northwood, Middlesex, England, on 14 October 1943.