Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/248

 tales, 'Shoulder to Shoulder' (1891) and 'The Wrong Prescription ' (1893).

 HAWKINS, HENRY,  (1817–1907), judge, born at Hitchin on 14 Sept. 1817, was son of John Hawkins, a solicitor with a considerable 'family' practice, by his wife Susanna, daughter of Theed Pearse, clerk of the peace of Bedfordshire. After education at Bedford school, Hawkins was employed in his father's office long enough to take a dislike to legal work of that character, and with the reluctant consent of his parents on 16 April 1839 entered himself at the Middle Temple, and took out a special pleader's licence as soon as he was qualified. In 1841 he was the pupil of Frederick Thompson, a special pleader, and later of George Butt, who eventually became a Q.C. On 3 May 1843 Hawkins was called to the bar, and forthwith joined the home circuit and the Hertfordshire sessions. It appears that owing to his practice under the bar he was never quite without business, and although his earlier progress was not exceptionally rapid it was unbroken from the time of his call until he took silk in 1858. For the next eighteen years Hawkins occupied a place of increasing importance among the leaders of the bar. His lively intelligence, well-chosen language, and admirable manner made him exceedingly successful in winning the verdicts of juries, and he was the equal of his contemporaries, Serjeants Ballantine [q. v. Suppl. I] and Parry, in the forensic arts of which they were masters.

Hawkins was engaged in many cases of great ephemeral importance. In 1852 he was counsel for Simon Bernard, who was acquitted on a charge of complicity in the Orsini conspiracy against Napoleon III. As junior to Serjeant Byles [q. v.] he defended Sir John Dean Paul [q. v.], who was convicted in 1855 of fraud and sentenced to penal servitude. In 1862 he was junior to (Sir) William Bovill [q. v.] in Roupell v. Waite, in which Roupell confessed himself guilty of forgery and was subsequently sentenced to penal servitude for life. He also appeared for various defendants in the prosecutions instituted after the failure of Messrs. Overend and Gurney in 1866, all of them being acquitted. He was largely instrumental in securing the establishment by secondary evidence of the will and codicils of Lord St. Leonards, a case in which, with Frederick Andrew Inderwick [q. v. Suppl. II] and Dr. Henry Baker Tristram as his juniors, he appeared for Miss Sugden, and was able to hold his judgment on appeal (1875-6). He appeared in all but the earliest stages of the litigation of which Arthur Orton [q. v. Suppl. I], claiming to be Sir Roger Tichborne, was the principal figure (1871-2). When he was originally retained for the defence in the action of ejectment, it was no doubt intended that he should cross-examine the plaintiff, but before the case came on for trial John Duke Coleridge [q. v. Suppl. I], who had been instructed as one of the leaders of the western circuit, became solicitor-general, and as such the leader in the defence. In all the rhetorical art of cross-examination Hawkins was the greatest master, and he maintained his reputation in his cross-examination of several important witnesses, but the accident which deprived him of the right to cross-examine Orton was probably one of the bitterest disappointments of his life. When the trial at bar for perjury followed the collapse of the 'claimant's' action, Hawkins led for the crown (23 April 1872). His opening speech lasted six days and his reply nine days, while the prosecution lasted 188 days and Cockburn's summing-up eighteen days (Feb. 1874); in the action at nisi prius Coleridge had occupied twenty-three days in opening the case for the defence. There is no doubt that Hawkins's handling of the whole matter was worthy of the extraordinary occasion. From the time of his taking silk in 1858 to the end of the Tichborne case in 1874 he had no superior in the public estimation as a fighting advocate.

Besides his prolonged and lucrative practice in the courts, Hawkins was continually employed in compensation cases, before either juries or arbitrators. In particular he appeared for the royal commissioners engaged in the purchase of the site where the Royal Courts of Justice now stand. He had also a considerable practice in election petitions, being perhaps the most conspicuous counsel available for the purpose when, after the general election of 1868, those disputes were first tried before judges and decided independently of political considerations. Hawkins had stood as one of two liberal candidates for Barnstaple in 1865, but had not been returned; he made no other effort to enter the House of Commons.

In November 1876 Hawkins was appointed a judge of the queen's bench