Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/110

 his old constituency, and remained in parliament till 1899. In that year the lord president of the court of session, James Patrick Bannerrnan (afterwards Lord) Robertson [q. v. Suppl. II], became a lord of appeal, on the death of William Watson (Lord Watson) [q. v. Suppl. I], and so high was the estimation in which Balfour was held that the conservative government bestowed on him the vacant office. 'I have never in my life known an appointment which gave such universal pleasure,' Lord Rosebery said at a banquet given by the Scottish Liberal Club in honour of Balfour's appointment. In 1902 Balfour was raised to the peerage as Baron Kinross of Glasclune. His health, which had begun to fail before he left the bar, broke down rapidly after he became a judge. On 22 Jan. 1905 he died at Rothsay Terrace, Edinburgh, and was buried in the Dean cemetery there.

Balfour married twice: (1) in 1869, Lilias, daughter of the Hon. Lord Mackenzie (Scottish judge) by whom he had one son, Patrick Balfour, second Baron Kinross (b. 23 April 1870); (2) in 1877, Marianne Elizabeth, daughter of the first Baron Moncreiff [q. v.], by whom he had four sons and one daughter.

There are two portraits of Balfour: one, painted by John Callcott Horsley, R.A., was presented to him by his supporters in Ayrshire; the other, by Sir George Reid, president of the Royal Scottish Academy, was presented to him by the counties of Clackmannan and Kinross on the occasion of his becoming lord president. Both paintings are in the possession of his widow. A cartoon portrait by 'Spy' appeared in 'Vanity Fair' 1887.

 BANKS, JOHN THOMAS (1815?–1908), physician, was grandson of Percival Banks, surgeon in good practice in Ennis, co. Clare, who came of an English family settled in Ardee, co. Louth, in comfortable circumstances, from the middle of the seventeenth century. His father, also Percival Banks (d. 1848), the youngest of twenty-four children, after much foreign travel, and both naval and military service, succeeded to his father's practice at Ennis, and was later surgeon to the co. Clare Infirmary. John was the second son. His mother, Mary, was sister of Capt. Thomas Ramsay of the 89th regiment. The elder son, Percival Weldon Banks (d. 1850), a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and a barrister of Gray's Inn, took to literature in London, writing as 'Morgan Rattler' in 'Fraser's Magazine' and elsewhere.

John was born in London on 14 Oct., probably in 1815. The year is doubtful, but on entering Trinity College on 6 Feb. 1833 he gave his age as seventeen (MS. Entrance Boole, Trinity College, Dublin). According to his insurance policy, however, he was ninety-five at the time of his death ; if this be correct, he was born in 1812. After attending the grammar school of Ennis he began his medical studies in the school of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland as a pupil of (Sir) Henry Marsh [q. v.], professor of the practice of medicine there. Banks obtained the licence of the college in 1836.

Meanwhile he had in 1833 entered Trinity College, where in 1837 he graduated B.A. and M.B., and in 1843 proceeded M.D. In 1841 he became a licentiate, and in 1844 a fellow, of the King's and Queen's (now Royal) College of Physicians in Ireland. Professional promotion was rapid. In 1842 he was appointed lecturer in medicine in the Carmichael School of Medicine in Dublin, and in 1843 physician to the House of Industry Hospital ; this position he held till his death. In 1847 and 1848 he was censor of the College of Physicians in Ireland. In 1849 he was elected king's professor of the practice of medicine in the school of physic, Trinity College, a post which carried with it duties as physician to Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital. He resigned both these appointments in 1868, but he was afterwards consulting physician to the hospital. In 1851 he became assistant physician, and in 1854 physician, to the Richmond Lunatic Asylum. Among the many Dublin charities at which Banks filled the position of consulting physician in his later years was the Royal City of Dublin Hospital.

Banks was president of the College of Physicians 1869-71. From 1880 to 1898 he was regius professor of physic in the University of Dublin, and from 1880 to his death physician in Ireland successively to Queen Victoria and to King Edward VII. In 1861 Banks became president of the Dublin Pathological Society, and in 1882, when the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland was formed, Banks was chosen its first president. In 1887 the British Medical Association met in Dublin, with Banks in the office of president.

For many years Banks enjoyed a large 