News

Iris de Freitas Brazao (1896-1989)

06/03/2020

Born in 1896, Iris de Freitas was the daughter of a merchant in British Guiana. She registered as a student at Aberystwyth University in 1919 after a short period studying in Toronto.

At Aberystwyth she studied botany, Latin and modern languages, law and jurisprudence, and lived in Alexandra Hall, the first purpose-built university hall of residence for female students in the UK.

She also became Vice-President of the University’s Students’ Representative Council and the President of the Women’s Sectional Council.

Iris graduated with a BA in 1922, but continued her association with the University and qualified for the degree of LL.B in June 1927.

In 1929 she was admitted as the first woman to practise law in the Caribbean and was the first female prosecutor of a murder trial there.

Tributes published in the Guyana Chronicle after her death in May 1989 described her as “a pioneer and frontrunner of women who dared enter the exclusively male legal profession”, and someone who “blazed the trail for women lawyers”.

Members of staff at Aberystwyth University have been piecing together her story after alumni stumbled across the postcard, described as a “Postcard of black woman wearing Aberystwyth gown 1922-23”, online in April 2015.

The reverse side of the postcard featured only the handwritten words “With love and in memory of an enjoyable session, Iris 1922-23”, and the photographer’s details HH Davies of Pier Street Aberystwyth.

The postcard is now in the University’s archive.