Brotherhood of Barristers: A Cultural History of the British Legal Profession, 1840–1940

How did ideas of masculinity shape the British legal profession and the wider expectations of the white-collar professional? Brotherhood of Barristers examines the cultural history of the Inns of Court – four legal societies whose rituals of symbolic brotherhood took place in their supposedly ancient halls. These societies invented traditions to create a sense of belonging among members – or, conversely, to marginalize those who did not fit the profession's ideals. Ren Pepitone examines the legal profession's efforts to maintain an exclusive, masculine culture in the face of sweeping social changes across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Utilizing established sources such as institutional records alongside diaries, guidebooks, and newspapers, this book looks afresh at the gendered operations of Victorian professional life. Brotherhood of Barristers incorporates a diverse array of historical actors, from the bar's most high-flying to struggling law students, disbarred barristers, political radicals, and women's rights campaigners.

'A brilliant guide to the ribald, matey, precedent-obsessed world of British barristers. This is the history of how white male privilege gets perpetuated, and why the status quo is never an accident. Pepitone forensically unpacks the Inns of Court across the Victorian to mid-twentieth century era, and sheds light on the very heart of the British imperial establishment.' - Lucy Delap, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge

'With careful research, an impressive grounding in existing scholarship, and great clarity, Ren Pepitone beautifully illustrates the ways in which the Inns of Court not only cultivated a certain brand of professional gentlemanliness but simultaneously balanced a reverence for history with a sometimes-ambivalent embrace of modernity in a changing Britain.' - Paul Deslandes, The University of Vermont