Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 26 - AUS-CHI.pdf/366

 326

BOWEN— BOWLES

Bowen, Charles Synge Christopher, Baron (1835-1894), English judge, was bom on 1st January 1835, at Woolaston iu Gloucestershire, his father, Hie Rev. Christopher Bowen of Hollymount, Co. Mayo, being then curate of the parish. At ten years of age Charles Bowen was sent to school at Lille, whence he was transferred to Blackheath proprietary school. In 1850 he went to Rugby, entering the school-house. The master of his first form (the upper fifth) was Bradley, afterwards dean of Westminster, and his tutor was Cotton, afterwards headmaster of Marlborough, and subsequently bishop of Calcutta. At Rugby Bowen had a brilliant career, which he closed by winning a Balliol scholarship in 1863, while he was noted (as he was afterwards at Balliol) as a cricketer and football player. At Oxford he made good the promise of his earlier youth, his principal achievements being the Hertford scholarship 1855, First Class Classical Moderations 1856, Ireland scholarship 1857, Chancellor’s prize for Latin verse 1857, First Class in Lit. Hum. 1858, Balliol Fellowship 1858, Arnold prize for English essay 1859. He also won the friendship of, among many others, Benjamin Jowett, then tutor, afterwards master of Balliol, a friendship which only ended when Jowett died in 1893, a year before his pupil, who had in 1885 become visitor of the college. From Oxford Bowen went to London, where he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1861, and while studying law he wrote regularly for the Saturday Review, and also later for the Spectator. For a time he had little success at the bar considering his talents, and came near to exchanging it for the career of a college tutor. He had friends, however, who believed in him, and the persuasion of Mr Coleridge, afterwards Lord Chief Justice, the leader of the Western Circuit, which he had joined, and of Mr G. Baugh Allen, a well-known special pleader with whom he had read, and others, induced him to persevere. Soon after he had begun to make his mark he was briefed against the Claimant in the civil and criminal trials connected with the famous “Tichborne Case.” Bowen’s services to his leader, Sir John Coleridge, during the former helped to procure for him the appointment of junior counsel to the Treasury (known in the legal vernacular as AttorneyGeneral’s devil), when Sir John had passed, as he did while the trial proceeded, from the office of SolicitorGeneral to that of Attorney-General; and from this time his practice became a very large one. The strain, however, of the Tichborne trials had been great, and possibly the combination of severe intellectual effort with the struggle for athletic distinction at school and at college had told upon his constitution, for his physical health became unequal to the tasks which his zeal for work imposed upon it, and in 1879 his acceptance of a judgeship in the Queen’s Bench Division, on the retirement of Mr Justice Mellor, gave him the opportunity of comparative rest, while it closed to him the prospect of distinction in politics before he had had time to seek it. The character of Charles Bowen’s intellect hardly qualified him for some of the duties of a puisne judge; but it was otherwise when, in 1882, in succession to Lord Justice Holker, he was raised to the Court of Appeal. As a Lord Justice of Appeal he was conspicuous for his learning, his industry, and his courtesy to all who appeared before him ; and in spite of failing health he was able to sit more or less regularly until August 1893, when on the retirement of Lord Hannen he was made a Lord of Appeal in ordinary, and a baron for life, with the title of Baron Bowen of Colwood. By this time, however, his health had finally broken down ; he never sat as a law lord to hear appeals, and he gave but one vote as a peer, while his last public service consisted in presiding over the Commission which sat in

October 1893 to inquire into the Featherstone riots. He was barely able to attend the meeting held on 2nd December in order to raise a memorial to Dr Jowett, at which both his old friend Lord Chief Justice Coleridge and he, respectively mover and seconder of a resolution as to the disposal of the fund to be raised, made their last speeches in public. Lord Coleridge lived till 14th June, but Lord Bowen became rapidly worse during the early months of 1894, and died on 10th April. He was buried in the churchyard of Slaugham, near Colwood, his country house in Sussex; and a marble tablet has been erected to his memory in the vestibule of Lincoln’s Inn chapel, bearing a Latin inscription from the pen of the Hon. George Denman, formerly a judge of the Queen’s Bench Division, and a senior classic, who also died soon afterwards. Lord Bowen was regarded with great affection by all who knew him either professionally or privately. In the more intellectual circles of English society he had many friends, including Mr Gladstone. He had a polished and graceful wit, of which many instances might be given, although such anecdotes lose force in print. For example, when it was suggested on the occasion of an address to Queen Victoria, to be presented by her judges, that a passage in it, “ conscious as we are of our shortcomings,” suggested too great humility, he proposed the emendation “ conscious as we are of one another’s shortcomings ” ; and on another occasion he defined a jurist as “a person who knows a little about the laws of every country except his own.” Of Lord Bowen in the Court of Appeal Lord Davey wrote (Law Quarterly, July 1894), “It is upon his work there that his judicial reputation will rest. Law to Bowen was not a mere collection of rules, but was the embodiment of the conscience of the nation. . . . Lord Bowen will be remembered amongst the great judges who steered the ship in the transition from the old system to the new. . . . There will be found in the series of judgments delivered by him a luminous interpretation of legal principles as applied to the facts and business of life, expressed in language worthy even of his literary reputation.” Among good examples of his judgment, Lord Davey proceeded to cite that given in advising the House of Lords in Angus v. Dalton (6 App. Gas. 740), and those delivered in Abrath v. North-Eastern Railway (11 Q.B.D. 440); Thomas v. Quartermaine (18 Q.B.D. 685); Vagliano v. Bank of England (23 Q.B.D. 243) (in which he prepared the majority judgment of the Court, which was held to be wrrong in its conclusion by the majority of the House of Lords) ; and the Mogul Steamship Company v. MlGregor (23 Q.B.D. 598). Of Lord Bowen’s literary works besides those already indicated may be mentioned his translation of Virgil’s Eclogues, and jEneid, books i.-vi., his article on the “Administration of the Law,” contributed to The Reign of Queen Victoria, edited by Mr Humphry Ward, and his pamphlet The Alabama Claim and Arbitration considered from a Legal Point of View. Lord Bowen married in 1862 Emily Frances, eldest daughter of Mr James Meadows Rendel, F.R.S. (and niece of Mr Stuart Rendel, afterwards raised to the peerage as Baron Rendel), by whom he had issue, William Edward, a clergyman, born 1862, who succeeded to Hollymount; Maxwell Steele, born 1865; and Ethel Kate, bom November 1870. See also Lord Bowen, by Sir Henry Stewart Cunningham. (e. a. Ar.) Bowles, Samuel (1826-1878), American journalist, was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, 9th February 1826. He was the son of Samuel Bowles, an editor of the same city, who had established the weekly Springfield Republican in 1824. The daily Republican was begun in