Garrick Club members vote to lift 193-year ban on women joining

The men-only Garrick Club has finally voted to allow women to become members, 193 years after the London institution first opened its doors.

- Amelia Gentleman

The vote was passed with 59.98% of votes in favour at the end of a private meeting where several hundred members spent two hours debating the merits of permitting women to join.

The meeting was closed to nonmembers, and a warning was issued by the club's secretary before the vote that details of the occasion were confidential and should not be discussed with non-members.

Hundreds of Garrick members, many of them wearing the club's pink and green striped tie, had gathered inside the Connaught Rooms in Covent Garden in the late afternoon to cast a vote. Most were hoping the vote would end six weeks of intense scrutiny of the club's inner workings triggered by the Guardian's publication of a list of about 60 names of the club's most influential members.

The Garrick's closely guarded membership list revealed that the club remained a bulwark of Britain's still male-dominated establishment.

Listed alongside the king were the deputy prime minister, scores of leading lawyers, dozens of members of the House of Lords, 10 MPs, as well as heads of influential thinktanks, law firms and private equity companies, academics, senior journalists and the head of the independent press standards organisation.

It showed members were overwhelmingly white and the majority older than 50. Many theatre directors, producers and actors, from Benedict Cumberbatch to Brian Cox, are also members.