John Edmund Wentworth Addison (5 November 1838 – 22 April 1907) was a British

judge A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...

and Conservative politician.

Early life

Addison was born in 1838 in Bruges, Belgium and was the third son of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Robert Addison and his second wife, Grace Barton. Colonel Addison was born in India of Irish ancestry and after retiring from the army wrote a number of musical plays and light operas. J.E.W Addison was educated at Trinity College Dublin before being

called to the bar The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...

at the Inner Temple in 1862.

Career

He practised in the Northern circuit and in 1880 became a Queen's Counsel (QC). In 1873 he married Alice McKeand of Manchester, who predeceased him in 1894. In 1874 he was appointed

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, a position he held for sixteen years. In 1889 Addison was the senior prosecuting counsel in the celebrated trial of

Florence Maybrick Florence Elizabeth Chandler Maybrick (3 September 1862 – 23 October 1941) was an American woman convicted in the United Kingdom of murdering her husband, cotton merchant James Maybrick. Early life Florence Maybrick was born Florence Elizabet ...

.''Obituary. Judge Addison K.C.'', The Times, 24 April 1907, p. 11 At the 1885 general election, he was elected as Conservative Member of Parliament for

Ashton under Lyne Ashton-under-Lyne is a market town in Tameside, Greater Manchester, England. The population was 45,198 at the 2011 census. Historically in Lancashire, it is on the north bank of the River Tame, in the foothills of the Pennines, east of Manche ...

, defeating the sitting MP,

Hugh Mason Hugh Mason (30 January 1817 – 2 February 1886) was an English mill owner, social reformer and Liberal politician. He was born in Stalybridge and brought up in Stalybridge and Ashton-under-Lyne until he entered the family cotton business in ...

. At the ensuing general election in

1886 Events January–March * January 1 – Upper Burma is formally annexed to British Burma, following its conquest in the Third Anglo-Burmese War of November 1885. * January 5– 9 – Robert Louis Stevenson's novella ''Strange ...

he drew with his Liberal opponent. He was elected by the casting vote of the borough's mayor as returning officer. He held the seat at the

1892 Events January–March * January 1 – Ellis Island begins accommodating immigrants to the United States. * February 1 - The historic Enterprise Bar and Grill was established in Rico, Colorado. * February 27 – Rudolf Diesel applies for ...

election before standing down from parliament in

1895 Events January–March * January 5 – Dreyfus affair: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his army rank, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. * January 12 – The National Trust for Places of Histor ...

. On leaving the Commons in 1895, Addison was appointed a

county court A county court is a court based in or with a jurisdiction covering one or more counties, which are administrative divisions (subnational entities) within a country, not to be confused with the medieval system of ''county courts'' held by the high ...

judge in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. In 1897 he was transferred to the

Southwark Southwark ( ) is a district of Central London situated on the south bank of the River Thames, forming the north-western part of the wider modern London Borough of Southwark. The district, which is the oldest part of South London, developed ...

County Court, where he presided until his retirement due to ill health in 1906. Judge Addison died at his residence at

Hyde Park Hyde Park may refer to: Places England * Hyde Park, London, a Royal Park in Central London * Hyde Park, Leeds, an inner-city area of north-west Leeds * Hyde Park, Sheffield, district of Sheffield * Hyde Park, in Hyde, Greater Manchester Austra ...

, London in April 1907, aged 68.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Addison, J E W 1838 births 1907 deaths Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies UK MPs 1885–1886 UK MPs 1886–1892 UK MPs 1892–1895 Members of the Inner Temple 20th-century English judges Alumni of Trinity College Dublin Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Ashton-under-Lyne County Court judges (England and Wales) 19th-century English judges