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Horace Davey, Baron Davey of Fernhurst

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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Baron (1833-1907), English judge, son of Peter Davey, of Horton, Bucks, was born on the 30th of August 1833, and educated at Rugby and University College, Oxford. He took a double first-class in classics and mathematics, was senior mathematical scholar and Eldon law scholar, and was elected a fellow of his college. In 1861 he was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn, and read in the chambers of Mr (afterwards Vice-Chancellor) Wickens. Devoting himself to the Chancery side, he soon acquired a large practice, and in 1875 became a Q.C. In 1880 he was returned to parliament as a Liberal for Christchurch, Hants, but lost his seat in 1885. On Gladstone's return to power in 1886 he was appointed solicitor-general and was knighted, but had no seat in the House, being defeated at both Ipswich and Stockport in 1886; in 1888 he found a seat at Stockton-on-Tees, but was rejected by that constituency in 1892. As an equity lawyer Sir Horace Davey ranked among the finest intellects and the most subtle pleaders ever known at the English bar. He was standing counsel to the university of Oxford, and senior counsel to the Charity Commissioners, and was engaged in all the important Chancery suits of his time. Among the chief leading cases in which he took a prominent part were those of The Mogul Steamship Company v. M c Gregor, 1892, Boswell v. Coaks, 1884, Erlanger v. New Sombrero Company, 1878, and the Ooregum Gold Mines Company v. Roper, 1892; he was counsel for the promoters in the trial of the bishop of Lincoln, and leading counsel in the Berkeley peerage case. In 1862 he married Miss Louisa Donkin, who, with two sons and four daughters, survived him. In 1893 he was raised to the bench as a lord justice of appeal, and in the next year was made a lord of appeal in ordinary and a life peer. He died in London on the 20th of February 1907. Lord Davey's great legal knowledge was displayed in his judgments no less than at the bar. In legislation he took no conspicuous part, but he was a keen promoter of the act passed in 1906 for the checking of gambling.