DEATH ANNOUNCEMENT
GWENLLIAN MAIR PROSSER
“Gwen”
12 September 1946 – 27 May 2023
Cardiff Crown Court judge, Citizens Advice volunteer and second soprano for forty years
The usher at Cardiff Crown Court used to say you could tell what sort of morning it would be by the sound of Judge Prosser's heels in the corridor: quick and light meant the jury would be home before the rugby, slow and deliberate meant nobody was going anywhere until every document had been properly read.
Gwenllian, known always as Gwen, was born in Dowlais in 1946, the daughter of a school caretaker and a dinner lady. She won a place at the grammar school, then became the first in her family to go to university, reading law at University College Cardiff from 1964. She was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1968 and spent twenty years on the Wales and Chester Circuit, prosecuting and defending in courtrooms from Swansea to Mold, usually the only woman in the robing room.
She became a Recorder in 1989 and a Circuit Judge in 1996, sitting at Cardiff until 2016. Barristers learned that she disliked padding and loved precision; a long submission might be interrupted with a gentle 'Mr Rees, I think the jury has a bus to catch.' Defendants of every kind remembered her for the same thing: she explained, in plain words, exactly what was going to happen to them and why. In her room she kept a tin of Welsh cakes, and the staff knew that an open tin meant a hard case had finished.
Away from the bench she held a season ticket at the old Arms Park and then the Millennium Stadium, sang second soprano in a Cardiff choir for forty years. Widowed in 2012 when her husband David, an architect, died, she filled the quiet with her grandchildren and her friends. After retiring she volunteered two days a week at Citizens Advice in Cardiff, a former judge helping people understand a council tax bill, which she said was the best job she had ever had.
Gwen died at home in Pontcanna on 27 May 2023 after a short illness, with her family around her and a choir on the radio. She leaves her son Rhodri, her daughter Catrin, four grandchildren and a great many people who left her presence knowing exactly where they stood.
“Say what you mean, mean what you say, and always keep a tin of Welsh cakes.”