Margaret Kidd

 ( 1900 Births ) 

After the death of her father in 1928 she contested his parliamentary seat at the by-election, also as a Unionist, but was defeated by Emanuel Shinwell.

She was the first woman advocate to appear before the House of Lords and before a parliamentary select committee. In 1948, she became the first British woman King's Counsel in Britain: Frances Moran was the first woman to take silk in the British Isles, having become an Irish senior counsel in 1941. She was appointed Sheriff Principal, the first woman to occupy this position, for Dumfries and Galloway in 1960, and from 1966 to her retirement in 1974 Sheriff Principal of Perth and Angus. She was the editing of the Court of Session law reports of the Scots Law Times from 1942 to 1976.

Kidd served as Keeper of the Advocates Library 1956–1969.

Apart from her legal work she maintained an active public and charitable role. She was a founder member of the Stair Society and a vice-president of the Federation of University Women and the Electrical Association for Women. She had then become the vice-president of the Federation of University Women Queen's Nursing Institute. Kidd also championed improvements to women's access to work and promoted equal opportunities. In 1930, she made a speech at the University of Glasgow entitled "Law as a Profession of Women" where she commented on the difficulty of being a female advocate given they were dependent on male solicitors for work, and discussed how old lawyers were "inclined to be distrustful of women". The Scotsman reported: "she did not want them to think that she had not received fair play. She had had an easy time, but she did not think that she had been so successful as she would have been had she been a man."