The book is not without faults. The blow-by-blow accounts of these trials are sometimes too detailed to be of general interest, and the author's claim that all these women are heroines is stretching a point.
Still, the asides on everything from the back-breaking labor performed by female domestics to the effects of the women's reform movement of the 1890s to the commotion caused by women wearing bloomers and riding bicycles, all skilfully interwoven with the evolution of the law regarding women, makes for an engaging social and legal history.
Sheila Munro is a Powell River writer.
