The Honourable Arthur Child (20 November 1852 – 24 August 1902)CHILD, Arthur’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2007 was a British lawyer, jurist and colonial administrator who was

Chief Justice of St Lucia The Chief Justice of St Lucia was the head of the Supreme Court of St Lucia, an island member of the Windward Islands in the West Indies. The court was replaced by the Windward and Leeward Islands Supreme Court and the Windward and Leeward Islands ...

from 1890 to 1902.

Career

Child was born in 1852, the 11th child of Henry Child, a solicitor in London. He was from a family of lawyers; two of his father′s brothers were also solicitors. He was educated privately at Priory-house School, Clapton and the

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

, and was

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

Middle Temple The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn an ...

on 17 November 1876. After practicing on the South Eastern Circuit at the Mayor′s Court and the Central Criminal Court, he left for the West Indies when he was appointed

Stipendiary Magistrate Stipendiary magistrates were magistrates that were paid for their work (they received a stipend). They existed in the judiciaries of the United Kingdom and those of several former British territories, where they sat in the lowest-level criminal ...

at San Fernando, Trinidad in 1882. He also acted as a puisne judge there from 1887 to 1888. He was appointed acting Chief Justice of

Saint Lucia Saint Lucia ( acf, Sent Lisi, french: Sainte-Lucie) is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean. The island was previously called Iouanalao and later Hewanorra, names given by the native Arawaks and Caribs, two Amerindian ...

in 1889, and confirmed in the position in 1890. He also administered the government on the island in 1894–95, and was a member of the Court of Appeal for the

British Windward Islands The British Windward Islands was an administrative grouping of British colonies in the Windward Islands of the West Indies, existing from 1833 until 31 December 1959 and consisting of the islands of Grenada, St Lucia, Saint Vincent, the Grenad ...

. According to his obituary in

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

, he "was a sound lawyer and none of his decisions were ever reversed upon appeal to the Privy Council". In

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

, he was captain commanding the San Fernando volunteers. Child died in office at

Castries Castries is the capital and largest city of Saint Lucia, an island country in the Caribbean. The urban area has a population of approximately 20,000, while the eponymous district has a population of 70,000, as at May 2013. The city stretches o ...

, St Lucia, on 24 August 1902, leaving a widow and four sons.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Child, Arthur 1852 births 1902 deaths Members of the Middle Temple 19th-century English judges British colonial attorneys general in the Americas Saint Lucian judges British Windward Islands judges British Trinidad and Tobago judges