Although Irish women became eligible for jury service under British jurisdiction in 1918, an Act brought in in 1927 by Kevin O'Higgins as required qualified women to actually apply to serve on juries. None did so in Dublin until 1958, when Beatrice Dixon applied and was accepted - but three years later she had still not been asked to serve. "It took letters and articles in The Irish Times for me to be eventually selected; my concern was not the right of women to serve on a jury but the right of a defendant to be tried by a jury of both men and women," she says.
A housewife, mother, lobbyist, historian, political aspirant and prize-winning gardener, Beatrice Dixon looks back today on a life of challenge and variety, which also included a wartime spell in the WAAF. A regular contributor to the Letters page of The Irish Times (though not as prolific as her late husband, F.E. Dixon), Mrs Dixon now lives a quiet life, keeps in touch with her family and tends her garden.
Anglo-Irish family
"I was born the younger of two girls," she says, "and my father, James Bayley Butler, will be remembered by an older generation as a regular panellist on Information Please. He came from an Anglo-Irish family with a tradition of service as administrators in the East India Company." Following the family's return from India, he went to college in London and then on to the old Royal University in Dublin where he graduated in medicine. "After serving as a doctor in the first World War, my father's interests turned to botany and zoology and for much of his life he was Professor of Zoology at UCD. He was also involved in the manufacture of Biotox, the only woodworm treatment available in Ireland at the time."
Beatrice's mother was a McWeeney from a family with strong journalistic traditions (Paul in The Irish Times, Arthur in the Irish Independent, Myles in RTE).
"After kindergarten, my mother determined that, although Catholic, we would attend Alexandra School and when I was eight we started in the `old' Alex on Earlsfort Terrace. They were happy years in a friendly school where the pupils were not pushed too hard," she recalls. For their final years of schooling, both girls were sent to the Ursuline Convent in Waterford.
On leaving school, her sister Katherine studied science in UCD but had already set her sights on religious life. She joined the Irish Sisters of Charity - but not before obtaining her pilot's flying licence. Beatrice joined Biotox and served in various capacities before becoming company secretary.
"During the early years of the war I met my future husband, Freddy Dixon, lately come to Ireland to join the fledgling Meteorological Service," Beatrice says. "But, following the death of my mother and when my father re-married, I went to England and joined the WAAF."
Hitch-hiking
While serving as a meteorological observer at aerodromes in North Devon and Wiltshire, Beatrice spent much of her free time "hitch-hiking - much easier than - visiting historic sites, whenever the opportunity arose." After demob, she worked in London for two years before returning to Dublin.
Beatrice and Freddy Dixon were married in 1950 and when their only child, Margery, was born they moved to the house in Terenure where Beatrice still lives.
"Freddy, Sister Katherine and myself were active members of the Old Dublin Society and contributed papers on many topics over 50 years. Freddy's interests lay in weather, semi-scientific topics, stamps, postmarks, postcards, local history, coins. I concentrated on philanthropists, with one incursion into 18th-century rogues."
She joined the Irish Housewives Association, a lobbygroup active whenever the price of food was raised. "In the 1957 General Election I ran in the Dublin South-west constituency, but the election strategy was over-optimistic and, while I reached the seventh count, I was eliminated along with Sean MacBride, a Minister in the outgoing InterParty Government."
Iceland expedition
A lifelong member of the Irish Girl Guides, Beatrice arranged field trips and attended events throughout Europe. "These were to stand me in good stead later," she remembers, "when I was part of a group of bird-watchers who went with Gerrit van Gelderen on an expedition to Iceland. The outdoor catering arrangements were badly organised, so I rolled up my sleeves and took over the provision of meals in difficult circumstances" - thereby earning the undying gratitude of the party.
Beatrice gardens enthusiastically and her lilies continue to win prizes at flower shows ("I get quite cross if I don't win"). She takes a keen interest in current affairs but is concerned at the materialism she sees all around. "I am afraid that the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater," she says. "Nevertheless, I enjoy every moment of life - and am never bored."