In a picture caption in yesterday's Community section Mr. Ian Ramsey QC was incorrectly identified as the assistant to Mrs. Lois Browne Evans in the trial of Larry Tacklyn. Mr. Ramsey was, in fact, leading counsel.

You may love her or you may hate her, but you can never ignore her. From her earliest days as a lawyer, Mrs. Lois Browne Evans has been a fearless fighter for what she believes in -- and most of all she believes in herself.

A pioneer among the young and the restless of her generation, her unwillingness to meekly accept any status quo would ultimately lead her to making local history in many ways.

At the time of her graduation from Berkeley Institute in the mid-1940s, her academic achievements should have been an entree to any number of good jobs, but because of the limitations black women faced in the job market she settled for a junior bookkeeper's position at the black-owned Quality Bakery.

Nine months later, when the bakery folded, she moved on to a teaching post at Elliott School and did very well.

"Some of my pupils are prominent in the community today, and I'm very proud of them,'' the ex-teacher said. "I have good memories of Elliott.'' Nonetheless, she dreamt of being a lawyer. If that seemed far-fetched, it was hardly surprising. Women lawyers, let alone black women lawyers, were unheard of in Bermuda.

Unfazed, the young Miss Browne set her sights on Howard University where some of her friends were already studying. Plans were well advanced when a chance meeting between her father and lawyer (later Sir) Edward Richards set them awry.

"I hear your daughter wants to do law, but what's this about her going to America?'' the barrister challenged. "She must go to England if she is going to be a lawyer. Tell her to come and see me.'' When daddy arrived home with this information, his daughter was aghast. "I told my father: `If ever there was a country behind God's back this is it. I'm not going', '' she recalled.

Still, Lois kept her appointment with her former teacher, who duly began the enrolment process for Middle Temple at London's Inns of Court. "I was living at home, and my father was paying. In those days you did what you were told!'' is how Mrs. Browne Evans explains the about-turn.

The experience was to prove one of the most rewarding of her life. "College years were fun,'' she said. "I met so many people from other Commonwealth countries. Living in London was a most broadening experience. I thoroughly enjoyed it and have kept the friends I made there.'' Indeed, the young men and women with whom she mixed reads like a United Nations' Who's Who, and includes many who went on to make their mark on the world stage.

"I mixed with Mr. Dudley Thompson, who became Foreign Minister in the Manley (father and son) governments in Jamaica. Dudley is now Jamaican ambassador to Nigeria.

"I also met Michael Manley, who was a trade unionist in London, and his brother Douglas; Earl Barrow, who became Prime Minister of Barbados; Lynden Pindling, who became Prime Minister of the Bahamas; Eugene Walwyn who became Attorney-General of St. Kitts; and my African girlfriend, Aduke Alakija, who became Nigerian ambassador to Sweden.'' Young and idealistic, her fellow colonials had more on their minds than law degrees.

"Moving their countries forward to self-determination -- I like that word better than independence -- was the talk of law students in the '50s. It was the notion of all colonial people after World War II. The students were motivated by ideals, social reform and change, removing poverty and so forth,'' she said.

Most would see their goals realised as their homelands achieved independence during the late '50s and '60s -- often with Lois as a witness. Small wonder, then, that she still chafes at Bermuda's retention of its colonial ties.

Passing her Bar finals in December, 1952, Miss Browne was called to the London Bar in June, 1953 proudly watched by her mother.

Like all young graduates, Miss Browne returned home brimming with confidence and rarin' to go. Her vision was lively, her ambitions unlimited.

Called to the local Bar in December, 1953, she boldly opened her own practice the following month. Young, gifted and black she might have been, but she was also a realist.

"Who was going to give me a job as the first woman lawyer?'' she exclaimed.

To her astonishment, her newly-installed 'phone rang immediately. It was the Supreme Court offering her the then-equivalent of a legal aid case.

Uncharacteristically, she hesitated -- until her secretary reminded her that she didn't need an office to appear in Court. Miss Browne duly won the case.

"Looking back, I'm sure they gave me that case to see how I would perform,'' she said. "I performed so well that before the case was over I had my second case!'' And she won that too.

But the first flushes of success were short-lived as she came up against the full brunt of what she calls Victorian thinking from both the public and the then-Chief Justice, Sir Trounsell Gilbert.

"A man came to my office who had been accused by his ex-girlfriend of raping her. When people heard I was going to defend a rapist they said, `That girl hasn't got an ounce of shame!' But I won my case,'' she said proudly.

Later in her career she would refuse rape (and drug) cases altogether. Keen as mustard, Miss Browne was anxious to be a leading lawyer in really challenging cases, and three murder trials looked like the answer. Each time the Chief Justice thought otherwise.

"One case was of a woman who had stabbed her lover. Sir Edward Richards was the leading lawyer and he asked me to work as his junior, but the Chief Justice said no. He didn't think I should be involved in a case where a woman stabbed her paramour -- that was the term they used for lover in those days -- so Mr. Ronnie Barnard, another young lawyer, was chosen instead.

"Sir Trounsell wasn't being sexist -- he was just Victorian. He was very nice to me and was just protecting me. He didn't think I should be involved in seamy, unladylike cases,'' she said.

In another murder case, the family arrived on her doorstep right after the suspect was arrested. Lois rushed to Hamilton Prison and interviewed him. She applied to the Chief Justice to be leading counsel and asked for an assistant.

He said he would consider it if Miss Browne could find a junior.

"He already knew the only junior to me was Eric Jones, a Seventh-Day Adventist who wouldn't do certain cases for religious reasons, so I had no junior.'' Frustrated but determined, Lois reluctantly returned to the Chief Justice with an offer to surrender her seniority in the case to Mr. Arnold Francis in exchange for being his junior.

"Mr. Francis was very generous and allowed me to cross-examine some witnesses, so I played a more active role than just taking notes,'' she said.

The junior also had a say in planning the defence strategy, and was thus part of another "first'': the importation of an American psychiatrist to give evidence.

Her "progress'' didn't last long. When the next "legal aid'' case came up, another Chief Justice said he didn't think she was senior enough, and insisted she be a junior notetaker or nothing. Because the accused's family was adamant she be involved, Miss Browne reluctantly agreed. She was so angry that "if I could have packed up and left Bermuda that day I would have done so''.

Overwhelmed by the obstacles facing her career, the frustrated young attorney told her parents she was leaving Bermuda.

"I didn't want to come back in the first place,'' she admitted. "The country was so backward in the '50s. By 1960 I was thinking about leaving.'' Eventually, she decided to by-pass the prejudices of the "legal aid'' route and take on the defence of Wendell Willis Lightbourne herself -- even if it meant donating her services.

Bermuda had been agog following a series of unsolved murders, and Lighbourne was charged with one of them. Lois never doubted his innocence -- and doesn't to this day.

"The case lasted six months from beginning to end, and I started off excited because it was my first job as leading counsel,'' she remembered.

Indeed, it was to be an important milestone in what has been a very successful and celebrated career spanning 40 years.

Although Lightbourne was found guilty, Mrs. Browne Evans said the jury's recommendation of mercy was a "first.'' Today, some memories of the case are still so painful that she cannot discuss them. Others remind her that her pain was shared.

"The prosecutor was a Catholic who didn't believe in capital punishment,'' she remembered. "Throughout the trial he suffered pangs of regret that his job had put him in such a position. After the verdict we went upstairs, where he drew open his bottom drawer and had a little port. He called it a celebration. He was so relieved I believe he even went to church and said some Hail Marys. He gave up his job after that.'' But it is perhaps for her defence of Larry Tacklyn who, along with Erskine (Buck) Burrows was accused of murdering Governor Sir Richard Sharples and his aide-de-camp Capt. Hugh Sayers and the Shopping Centre murders of Mr. Victor Rego and Mr. Mark Doe, that Mrs. Browne Evans is best remembered.

"I was always convinced that Tacklyn was innocent, so I had no compunction about giving the case all I had. Mr. Ian Ramsey, QC, came from Jamaica to assist me.'' Firmly anti-capital punishment from her university days, Mrs. Browne Evans was emotionally wracked when the guilty verdict came down on Tacklyn's role in the Shopping Centre murders (he was acquitted of the Government House murders) and he was sentenced to hang.

Eleventh-hour prayer vigils and frantic legal footwork failed to spare him from the gallows even as the people rioted.

"The saddest part was facing Tacklyn when the Governor, acting on legal advice, decided he was not going to act on documents we handed him just before midnight asking for leave to appeal to the Privy Council.

"After I told Tacklyn he said something to the effect that he forgave them their ignorance. He was a Muslim to the end and he took it bravely, but he was very disappointed.'' Mrs. Browne Evans left the prison that night with the assurance that if the Governor rang before dawn staying the execution, she would be informed immediately by Commissioner of Prisons. "When I didn't get the call I knew that at some hour the hanging had taken place. To this day, no-one will say at what time it happened, but in church a certain spiritual feeling came over everybody and we felt that was the moment Larry Tacklyn died.'' Her stance on capital punishment is also the reason why Mrs. Browne Evans is an active member of Amnesty International and has never sat on the Supreme Court bench.

"People talk about crowning your law career by sitting on the bench, but I never wanted to be in a position of having to pass the death sentence. I am against taking any life, period.'' It is also why, as the Jamaican government representative in Bermuda, she had no hesitation in making her feelings about that island's capital punishment policy known to its Chief Justice -- face to face.

When drugs became the major criminal work in 1973, Mrs. Browne Evans decided to wind down her criminal practice and concentrate on other areas of the law.

"When I had done such big, celebrated cases I couldn't be running around doing breaking and enterings,'' she explained. "I only went to the Supreme Court when there was a very challenging case.'' Looking back on the way she has conducted her legal career, Mrs. Browne Evans has no regrets.

"Because I was a pioneer there are a lot of people who hate me. They don't like somebody who rocked the boat, but I am always satisfied that I have done my Christian duty. And as a Christian I leave it up to God to judge people because He said, `Judge not lest ye be judged'.'' As for thoughts of retirement -- forget it. "As long as my brain is still good and the marbles aren't rattling around, I don't want to retire,'' she admitted.

But what if she had to choose between the law and politics? "I would give up politics first,'' she assured. "I began as a lawyer and I shall end as a lawyer. Law was my dream.'' There is much, however, that worries her about the legal profession, and particularly the young Bermudians entering it.

"Young students are looking to the profession only as a means of making money -- lots of money,'' she said. "Prices have skyrocketed for lawyers' services, and it exceeds the average budget, so more and more people are applying for legal aid. The Government is going to find itself having to grant more and more money, and the more it grants the more lawyers will fight for that work.

"My advice to young lawyers is: Hold to some lofty ideal, as did great lawyers like Clarence Darrow, Thurgood Marshall, Norman Manley and Sir Hugh Wooding. Don't be obsessed that, because of the technology of the new era, you must constantly devote yourselves to the corporate world to the exclusion of doing what is right for people.'' Bemoaning the lack of fraternity in the local profession, Mrs. Browne Evans views the influx of non-Bermudian lawyers as a serious threat to the careers of locals. "At the rate non-Bermudians are being called to the Bar after one year's residence and working here, I would hate to know how many Bermudians will be left in the profession in 40 years' time.'' THE MANY FACES OF LOIS BROWNE EVANS -- Bermuda's first female barrister has left an indelible mark on the local judicial system during her 40 years in practice.

FOR THE DEFENCE -- Leading counsel Mrs. Lois Browne Evans and her assistant, Mr. Ian Ramsey, QC, pictured during the Supreme Court trial of Larry Tacklyn, who was subsequently hanged for the Shopping Centre murders.