Ethel Houston

Pioneering lawyer and Enigma code breaker

Born: April 19, 1924;

Died: November 29, 2017

ETHEL Houston, who has died aged 93, was the first woman to be appointed as a senior partner in a Scottish law firm when she was named to the post by Balfour + Manson in Edinburgh in 1949 and remained there for 45 years, latterly as a director. She was also the first woman to be elected, in 1975, to the Council of the Law Society of Scotland and was appointed in 2009 as an honorary member of the council.

She had previously broken off her studies at Edinburgh University in late 1943 to serve the Foreign Office during the Second World War as one of the Enigma code-breakers at the top-secret Bletchley Park intelligence centre, Buckinghamshire, intercepting and interpreting ciphered Nazi radio traffic.

With the civilian rank TJAO (Temporary Junior Administrative Officer), she worked in Block D (6), one of the most important sections at Bletchley Park, which was built to look like a hospital to avoid Luftwaffe air raids. Her job was to crack encrypted messages between the Nazi armed forces and their intelligence agencies, a crucial part of the war effort. Block D was built along a single corridor to keep the numbered departments separate, so that Miss Houston and her Department 6 colleagues had no idea what other blocks or huts were doing, or vice versa.

She served there, in what was essentially a tunnel, for 18 months until the end of the war. Her name features on a brick in the commemorative Codebreakers' Wall for the Enigma de-coders, built around the famous Hut 8 at Bletchley.

Ethel May Houston was born on April 19, 1924 to a family of Christian Brethren who had been missionaries in Spain during the early 1920s but settled in Edinburgh and worshipped at the Glanton Assembly in the Old School House in Edinburgh's Morningside district. Ethel attended James Gillespie's High School (at the time for girls) but when her big brother James, then 18, was accepted to the University of Edinburgh, their father wanted Ethel to follow her brother to provide family support. So she crammed two years of school work into three hectic months and passed the university’s preliminary exams, an alternative to the more usual Scottish Highers route.

Graduating Master of Arts in 1943, she opted to go into law but found it difficult to get an apprenticeship in a law firm, most of whom had the unofficial motto "we don't take women." She finally got an apprenticeship with Balfour + Manson in the capital on October 4, 1943, possibly because the firm had a strong Christian Brethren tradition starting with its founders from Orkney.

At the same time, she was studying for an LL.B (Bachelor of Laws) at Edinburgh, where her teachers alerted the British army to her talents and she interrupted her studies to serve at Bletchley Park. At the end of the war, she was demobilized and returned to her apprenticeship at Balfour + Manson and to complete her LL.B at Edinburgh, qualifying as a solicitor in 1947; she was assumed (appointed) as a partner in 1949.

Her appointment was seen as a breakthrough for women at a time when female lawyers and law students were few and far between. By 2006, Balfour + Manson had an equal number of men and women in the partnership.

During her early days in the firm's offices on Frederick Street, most of the staff arrived by tram, but Miss Houston cut a dash in an ageing little blue Ford, registration CFY 9, which she parked nose in to the kerb. Getting a parking spot was no problem in those days. Since she was a rare car owner in the firm, she shared the little Ford as an office car. She recalled that the partners, committed Christians, kneeled to read from the Bible every morning and that a new employee once walked in without knocking, bent down and asked if he could help look for what they had lost.

When a company operating a car and passenger ferry service between Granton and Burntisland went into liquidation, Miss Houston was instructed by the creditors to take possession of its fleet of converted steel tank-landing crafts, keep them in working order and sell them to the highest bidder. To ensure that they did not rust in Granton harbour, she arranged for the captain and crew to take the staff of Balfour + Manson for evening sails up and down the Firth of Forth until she found a purchaser.

Her brother, James Houston, was also prominent in Edinburgh Brethren circles. During the war, he was at Edinburgh University where he recalled fire-watching for Luftwaffe incendiary bombs on the roof of the Old College. He was excused military service on health grounds, and he was to spend the latter part of the war in town planning for post-war regeneration in the Clyde valley before emigrating to Canada to become Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College, Vancouver, which he co-founded. Now 95, he remains on the College's Board of Governors and still gives occasional classes.

Later in life, Miss Houston served as a director at the Leith School of Art, where she handled the legal affairs and helped steer the school after its founders, Mark and Charlotte Cheverton, were killed in a 1991 car crash in the Scottish borders. "One of Ethel’s great skills was to help realise the school’s vision by setting out clear aims and objectives that were achievable," the school's current principal Philip Archer told The Herald. "She had worked closely with the founders to help them create a set of aims divided into four categories: Artistic, Spiritual, Business and Charitable. The aims provide the roots that have enabled the school to continually grow and flourish. She allowed us to hold our school board meetings at Balfour + Manson because every inch of the school was used as studio space.

"Her outlook was never parochial but always international. When she retired from both the school and the law firm, she went to Africa for two years to assist the government of Eritrea. At Leith School Art, I once showed her a print titled Enigma honouring the famous Bletchley Park codebreaker Alan Turing. She said to me: 'it's not common knowledge I was a junior member of Alan Turing’s team at Bletchley Park.' She immediately bought the print. Into elderly age, she drove an old and very loud, orange Triumph TR7 sports car around Edinburgh. She was small in height but great in stature and character with a sharp mind and very kindly and modest nature."

PHIL DAVISON