Sir Thomas Raffles Hughes, KC (28 January 1856 –24 October 1938) was a British barrister. Prominent at the Chancery Bar, he was chairman of the
General Council of the Bar from 1920 to 1931.
The son of Edward Hughes of Huyton Hall, Lancashire, Thomas Hughes was educated at
Birkenhead School and
Trinity College, Cambridge, where was a scholar and took second-class honours in the
classical tripos in 1878.
He 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 ...
by
Lincoln's Inn
The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. (The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn.) Lincoln ...
in 1880, and was the pupil of
Matthew Ingle Joyce, later a Chancery judge. He joined the Northern Circuit and practiced there until he
took silk in 1898, when he settled in London, practising in the court of
Mr Justice Byrne, then of
Mr Justice Farwell. When his pupil-master Ingle Joyce was elevated to the High Court in 1900, Hughes moved to his court, dividing up the work with
Robert Younger KC (later Lord Blanesburgh).
Unlike other Chancery silks, Hughes never went "special" but attached himself to a succession of Chancery judges. He never became a judge, possibly owing the paucity of Chancery Division vacancies.
Hughes became chairman of the
General Council of the Bar in 1920 in succession to John Alderson Foote, KC, serving until 1931. He was knighted in 1926.
Profile
ukwhoswho.com. Accessed 24 January 2023.
References
Sources
* "Sir Thomas Hughes, K.C.", ''The Times'', 25 October 1938, p. 16
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hughes, Thomas Raffles
Knights Bachelor
1938 deaths
English King's Counsel
19th-century King's Counsel
20th-century King's Counsel
Members of Lincoln's Inn
People educated at Birkenhead School
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge