William Brett, 1st Viscount Esher

William Baliol Brett, 1st Viscount Esher PC, QC (13 August 1815 – 24 May 1899), known as Sir William Brett between 1868 and 1883, was a British lawyer, judge and Conservative politician. He was briefly Solicitor-General under Benjamin Disraeli and then served as a justice of the Court of Common Pleas between 1868 and 1876, as a Lord Justice of Appeal between 1876 and 1883 and as Master of the Rolls. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Esher in 1885 and further honoured when he was made Viscount Esher on his retirement in 1897.

Background and education

Brett was a son of the Reverend Joseph George Brett, of Chelsea, London, by Dorothy, daughter of George Best, of Chilston Park, Boughton Malherbe, Kent.^[2] He was educated at Westminster School, King's College London and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.^[3] Brett rowed for Cambridge University Boat Club against Leander Club in 1837 and 1838, then in the victorious Cambridge crew against Oxford University in the 1839 Boat Race.^[4]

Legal, judicial and political career

Called to the Bar in 1840, Brett went to the northern circuit,^[5] and became a Queen's Counsel in 1861.^[6] On the death of Richard Cobden in 1865 he unsuccessfully contested Rochdale as a Conservative, but in 1866 was returned for Helston in unique circumstances. He and his opponent polled exactly the same number of votes, whereupon the mayor, as returning officer, gave his casting vote for the Liberal candidate. As this vote was given after four o'clock, however, an appeal was lodged, and the House of Commons allowed both members to take their seats.^[5]

Brett rapidly made his mark in the House, and in early 1868 he was knighted^[7] and appointed Solicitor General under Benjamin Disraeli. On behalf of the crown he prosecuted the Fenians charged with having caused the Clerkenwell Outrage. In parliament he took a leading part in the promotion of bills connected with the administration of law and justice. In August 1868 he was appointed a Justice of the Court of Common Pleas.^[8] Some of his sentences in this capacity excited much criticism, notably so in the case of the gas stokers strike, when he sentenced the defendants to imprisonment for twelve months, with hard labour, which was afterwards reduced by the Home Secretary to four months.^[5]

On the reconstitution of the Court of Appeal in 1876, Brett was elevated to the rank of a Lord Justice of Appeal. He was sworn of the Privy Council at the same time.^[9] After holding this position for seven years, he succeeded Sir George Jessel as Master of the Rolls in 1883.^[10] In 1885 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Esher, of Esher in the County of Surrey.^[11] He opposed the bill proposing that an accused person or his wife might give evidence in their own case, and supported the bill which empowered Lords of Appeal to sit and vote after their retirement. The Solicitors Act 1888, which increased the powers of the Incorporated Law Society, owed much to his influence. In 1880 he delivered a speech in the House of Lords, deprecating the delay and expense of trials, which he regarded as having been increased by the 1873 Judicature Act.^[5] He retired from the bench at the close of 1897, and was created Viscount Esher, of Esher in the County of Surrey,^[12] a dignity never given to any judge, Lord Chancellors excepted, for mere legal conduct since the time of Lord Coke.^[5]

Important judgments

• Compagnie Financiere du Pacifique v Peruvian Guano Co (1882) 11 QBD 55 - Established the modern test for discovery of documents.
• Heaven v Pender (1883) - In the obiter dicta in his judgement of the Court of Appeal, Brett MR sought to establish a general "duty of care" between parties that would have led to a tort of negligence. Such a principle was only finally accepted by English courts in 1932.^[13]
• Filburn v People's Palace and Aquarium Co Ltd (1890) was a case that imposed strict liability upon owners of wild animals for harm caused by them.^[14]

Family

Lord Esher married Eugénie Mayer (1814–1904) in 1850.^[15] Eugénie was possibly the illegitimate daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte and Fanny Meyer, though other sources suggest that her father was one Louis Mayer.^[15] They had two sons, Reginald, and Eugène,^[15] and a daughter Violet, wife of William Humble Dudley Ward and mother of William Dudley Ward.^[2] Lord Esher died in London in May 1899, aged eighty-one, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Reginald.^[5]

See also

• List of Cambridge University Boat Race crews

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to William Brett.

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Viscount Esher

Masters of the Rolls Taylor Cromwell Hales Southwell Beaumont Hare Cordell Gerard Ellesmere Kinloss Phelips Julius Caesar Digges Charles Caesar Colepeper Lenthall Grimston Churchill Trevor Jekyll Verney Fortescue Strange Clarke Sewell Kenyon Arden Grant Plumer Gifford Lyndhurst Leach Cottenham Langdale Romilly Jessel Brett Lindley Alverstone Smith Collins Cozens-Hardy Swinfen Eady Sterndale Hanworth Wright Greene Evershed Denning Donaldson Bingham Woolf Phillips Clarke Neuberger Dyson