Dame Rose Heilbron, DBE (19 August 1914 – 8 December 2005) was a British barrister who served later as a High Court judge. Her career included many "firsts" for a woman – she was the first woman to achieve a first class honours degree in law at the University of Liverpool, the first woman to win a scholarship to Gray's Inn, one of the first two women to be appointed King's Counsel in England, She became something of a household name, especially in her home city, when, in 1949–50, she became the first woman to lead in a murder case, when she defended the gangster George Kelly, accused of shooting dead the deputy manager of the Cameo Cinema in Liverpool, which became known as the "Cameo murder". He reportedly said that he was not "having a Judy defend [him]", but he later praised her for her painstaking defence, which led to her being named the Daily Mirrors "Woman of the Year". She was unable to save Kelly from the gallows, but the Court of Appeal quashed his conviction as unsafe in 2003.
Heilbron's successes in the first half of the 1950s included the defence of four men accused of hanging a boy during a burglary, in which she was able to show that the death had been an accident;
In 1945, she married the Dublin-born general practitioner, Nathaniel Burstein (1905–2010). He became a consultant at a Liverpool hospital, and there is little doubt that the availability of medical knowledge was a great help to her in some cases. Her daughter, Hilary, was born in January 1949; Hilary also became a barrister and was in 1987 appointed a QC, the 29th woman so honoured.
Death
Heilbron and her husband had moved from Liverpool to London when she was appointed a High Court judge. She died in a nursing home in Islington, of pneumonia and cerebrovascular ischaemia. A biography of Heilbron, by her daughter Hilary Heilbron, QC, was published in 2012.
|escutcheon = Azure two rods of Aesculapius in saltire Or between four towers in cross Argent enflamed Proper (Burstein) an inescutcheon of pretence Argent on a well Gules masoned Or between eight roses Gules barbed and seeded proper a Liver bird also Proper (Heilbron).