Sir Charles Hall (1814–1883) was an English barrister and judge, who became

Vice-Chancellor of England The Chancellor of the High Court is the head of the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice of England and Wales. This judge and the other two heads of divisions (Family and Queens Bench) sit by virtue of their offices often, as and when ...

Life

The fourth son of John Hall of

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

and Mary, daughter of John Dobson of

Durham Durham most commonly refers to: *Durham, England, a cathedral city and the county town of County Durham *County Durham, an English county *Durham County, North Carolina, a county in North Carolina, United States *Durham, North Carolina, a city in No ...

, he was born on 14 April 1814. His father, after financial losses by a bank failure, articled him to a solicitor in Manchester. In 1835 he entered the

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, and read for the bar successively with William Taprell the

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, James Russell of the chancery bar, and Lewis Duval the conveyancer. At the end of his year as a pupil he became Duval's principal assistant. In time Hall succeeded to the bulk of Duval's practice, and through his wife inherited much of his fortune; and lived for the rest of his life in Duval's house, almost certainly 8 Orme Square although sometimes referred to as 8 Bayswater Hill. During the next twenty years he became the recognised leader of the junior chancery bar, and the first authority of his day on

real property law Property law is the area of law that governs the various forms of ownership in real property (land) and personal property. Property refers to legally protected claims to resources, such as land and personal property, including intellectual prope ...

. Having been

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in Michaelmas term 1838, he built up a large court practice, and his pupils were prominent in the following generation of equity lawyers. Hall's best known cases were the Bridgewater peerage case in the House of Lords in 1853, the Shrewsbury peerage case, and ''Allgood v. Blake'' in the exchequer chamber in 1872. He drew up several bills for Lord Westbury, including his Registration of Titles Act, and assisted Lord Selborne in drafting the Judicature Act of 1873. Hall twice refused to

take silk In the United Kingdom and in some Commonwealth countries, a King's Counsel ( post-nominal initials KC) during the reign of a king, or Queen's Counsel (post-nominal initials QC) during the reign of a queen, is a lawyer (usually a barrister or ...

. In 1862 he became under-conveyancer and in 1864 conveyancer to the court of chancery, and in 1872 a bencher of his inn. He was raised to the bench in succession to Vice-chancellor

John Wickens Sir John Wickens (13 June 1815 – 25 October 1873) was an English barrister and judge. Life The second son of James Stephen Wickens of Chandos Street, Cavendish Square, London by his wife, Anne Goodenough, daughter of John Hayter of Winterbourne ...

in November 1873 and knighted. While walking home from his court, Hall was attacked by a stroke of paralysis, in June 1882. He resigned his judgeship before the ensuing Michaelmas sittings, and died on 12 December 1883. He never played any part in politics.

Family

In 1837 Hall married Sarah, daughter of Francis Duval of Exeter and Lewis Duval's niece. He had four sons, two of whom survived him, the younger being Charles Hall the lawyer and politician, and four daughters.

Notes

;Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Hall, Charles 1814 births 1883 deaths English barristers 19th-century English judges Lawyers from Manchester