Maud Isabel Crofts (1889-1965) née Ingram was born in 1889, the daughter of a barrister, Thomas Lewis Ingram. She was educated at Hamilton House School, Tunbridge Wells and at Girton College Cambridge (1908-1912) where she studied history and law. She was among the group of Oxbridge women who took the Law Society to court in 1913 over its refusal to allow women to qualify as solicitors. She became the first woman to be articled (in 1919) and to take out a practising certificate as a solicitor (1923). In 1922 she married John Cecil Crofts, also a solicitor. She wrote, lectured and broadcast on legal topics and in 1925 she published a volume entitled, 'Women under English Law' with a foreword by Dame Millicent Fawcett. Amongst her other activities, Maud was a member of the Executive Committee of the National Council of Women.