In the 1950s there was only a handful of women practising at the criminal bar. In 1991 Lord Justice Lawton wrote that from 1935 until 1947 he did not have a female opponent, and that before 1961 he could remember ony three women in practice. Elizabeth Lane and Rose Heilbron were two. Nina Lowry (initially Nina Collins), who has died at the age of 91, was the third. All became judges. Lawton may have forgotten one or two others, but there were shamefully few.
In 1967 Lowry became only the third female metropolitan stipendiary magistrate, sitting at the old west London court in Southcombe Street. Nine years later she was appointed a circuit judge, sitting at Inner London crown court and Knightsbridge, before becoming the first female permanent judge at the Old Bailey. The next year she was joined by her second husband, Richard Lowry, who sat in the adjoining court.
Never rude or patronising to advocates or defendants , she was not regarded as a harsh sentencer, but she was not afraid to impose condign punishment when she felt it was due. When she sentenced a bogus priest to 16 years for rape in 1987 her decision was met with “universal applause,” according to one newspaper at the time. “It has taken a woman judge to do at last what the nation has been crying out for,” said the Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens.
In 1990 she was the judge in the case of former police officer Rodney Whitchelo, who had spiked jars of baby food with poison and razor-blade fragments before returning them to supermarket shelves in an attempt to obtain £4m by blackmailing the food manufacturers. “Your blackmail letters show the evil side of your nature,” she told Whitchelo, sentencing him to 17 years.
In 1993, sentencing the sex offender and murderer Colin Hatch to life imprisonment, she told him, “It is not possible to envisage a time when you could be released safely.” Hatch was later killed in prison by a fellow inmate.
She was not one for secret justice, and in 1993 she ordered the names of two teenage rapists to be published, saying: “In my view the matter should be out in the open in the community where they live.” Her decisions were rarely the subject of successful appeals, and in 1994 the court of appeal upheld her ruling to allow the cross-examination of a defendant about his previous convictions for robbery.
That same year, in an early example of judges taking account of victim statements, she placed a former guardsman on probation on condition that he attend a pioneering clinic for sex offenders. He had admitted the rape of his eight-year-old daughter but the family had written asking that he be allowed to return home. It was, however, a decision that troubled her.
She was born Noreen Collins in London, the elder daughter of a businessman, John Collins, and his wife, Hilda (nee Gregory). Educated at Bedford high school, she read law at Birmingham University. She was called to the bar in 1948, joining Gray’s Inn – of which she became an active bencher in 1995 – and the south-eastern circuit.
Despite the fact that she came second in the bar finals, like so many young barristers – and at a time when there was a general prejudice against women – she had great difficulty finding chambers.
However, she possessed immense charm and made people feel they wanted to help her. One day, as she was telling the Gray’s Inn librarian that she had not been successful in finding a pupillage, she was overheard by the great criminal advocate of his day, CGL Du Cann, father of Richard and Edward, who took her on. Later she joined the set of Edward Cussen, then senior Treasury counsel at the Old Bailey.
The chambers undertook almost exclusively criminal work and she both prosecuted and defended, with John McVicar, later noted for his prison escapes, one of her earliest clients. She concealed a steely determination beneath a controlled and calm exterior: “You didn’t take her on,” was the consensus. One member of the chambers recalled that her style of cross-examination was: “Very ladylike. She would thrust a poignard into your side and you wouldn’t feel it until you noticed there was blood everywhere.”
Another former member of her chambers recalled, “She was the most terrific fun.” Encouraging to younger advocates of both sexes, it was she who ensured that Barbara Mills, later to become director of public prosecutions, joined the chambers.
She retired from the bench in 1995 and became a member of the criminal injuries compensation board until 2000. In 1996 she was a member of the criminal law revision committee. She was made a Freeman of the City of London in 1985.
In 1950 she married fellow barrister Edward Gardner. They had a son, Stephen, and daughter, Sally, but the marriage was dissolved in 1962 and the next year she married Richard Lowry, a fellow member of chambers. They had one daughter, Emma.
Devoted to each other – Helena Kennedy teased them that she would write a sitcom about them – outside the law the couple were avid theatregoers, travellers and visitors to art galleries. Throughout her life Lowry was a voracious reader, particularly of biographies and novels.
Richard died in 2001, and Stephen in 2009. She is survived by her daughters, four granddaughters, three grandsons and a great-granddaughter.
• Nina (Noreen Margaret) Lowry, barrister and judge, born 6 September 1925; died 30 March 2017
