Arthur Warren Samuels (19 May 1852 – 11 May 1925) was an

Irish Unionist Alliance The Irish Unionist Alliance (IUA), also known as the Irish Unionist Party, Irish Unionists or simply the Unionists, was a unionist political party founded in Ireland in 1891 from a merger of the Irish Conservative Party and the Irish Loyal and ...

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

(MP) in the United Kingdom Parliament and subsequently a Judge. The Irish Unionists were the Irish wing of the Conservative Party.

Biography

He was born in

Dún Laoghaire Dún Laoghaire ( , ) is a suburban coastal town in Dublin in Ireland. It is the administrative centre of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown. The town was built following the 1816 legislation that allowed the building of a major port to serve Dubli ...

County Dublin "Action to match our speech" , image_map = Island_of_Ireland_location_map_Dublin.svg , map_alt = map showing County Dublin as a small area of darker green on the east coast within the lighter green background of ...

, second son of Arthur Samuels, a solicitor, and Katherine Daly, daughter of Owen Daly of

Mornington, County Meath Mornington () is a coastal village on the estuary of the River Boyne in County Meath, Ireland approximately 5 km downriver from the centre of Drogheda. Together with the neighbouring villages of Laytown and Bettystown it comprises the cen ...

. He attended

Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

, before being called to the

Irish Bar The Bar of Ireland ( ga, Barra na hÉireann) is the professional association of barristers for Ireland, with over 2,000 members. It is based in the Law Library, with premises in Dublin and Cork. It is governed by the General Council of the Ba ...

in 1877. He became a

Queen's Counsel 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 o ...

(QC) in 1894 and was called to the

English bar Barristers in England and Wales are one of the two main categories of lawyer in England and Wales, the other being solicitors. Barristers have traditionally had the role of handling cases for representation in court, both defence and prosecutio ...

in 1896. Samuels was

Solicitor-General for Ireland The Solicitor-General for Ireland was the holder of an Irish and then (from the Act of Union 1800) United Kingdom government office. The holder was a deputy to the Attorney-General for Ireland, and advised the Crown on Irish legal matters. On ra ...

1917–1918 and

Attorney-General for Ireland The Attorney-General for Ireland was an Irish and then (from the Act of Union 1800) United Kingdom government office-holder. He was senior in rank to the Solicitor-General for Ireland: both advised the Crown on Irish legal matters. With the ...

in 1918–1919. He was also made a member of the Privy Council of Ireland in 1918. He was MP for

Dublin University The University of Dublin ( ga, Ollscoil Átha Cliath), corporately designated the Chancellor, Doctors and Masters of the University of Dublin, is a university located in Dublin, Ireland. It is the degree-awarding body for Trinity College Dubl ...

from 1917 to 1919, having previously been defeated in a 1903 by-election for the same constituency. Samuels left the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

when he was appointed to the office of Justice of the

King's Bench Division The King's Bench Division (or Queen's Bench Division when the monarch is female) of the High Court of Justice deals with a wide range of common law cases and has supervisory responsibility over certain lower courts. It hears appeals on point ...

of the

High Court of Justice in Ireland The High Court of Justice in Ireland was the court created by the Supreme Court of Judicature Act (Ireland) 1877 to replace the existing court structure in Ireland. Its creation mirrored the reform of the courts of England and Wales five years e ...

in 1919, an office which he held until the court's abolition under the

Courts of Justice Act 1924 The Courts of Justice Act 1924 ( ga, Acht Cúirteanna Breithiúnais, 1924) was an Act of the Oireachtas (No. 10 of 1924) that established a new system of courts for the Irish Free State (now Ireland or the Republic of Ireland). Among the new c ...

. In common with most of the judges of the old regime, he was not appointed to the High Court established under the 1924 Act. He died a year later.

Maurice Healy Maurice Healy (3 January 1859 – 9 November 1923) was an Irish nationalist politician, lawyer and Member of Parliament (MP). As a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, he was returned to in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Gre ...

in ''The Old Munster Circuit'' praised his personal qualities, his erudition and his valuable book on the financial aspects of

Home Rule Home rule is government of a colony, dependent country, or region by its own citizens. It is thus the power of a part (administrative division) of a state or an external dependent country to exercise such of the state's powers of governance wit ...

; but as a Law Officer and judge dismissed him as "undistinguished".

Family

He married in 1881 Emma Margaret Irwin, daughter of the Reverend James Irwin of

Howth Howth ( ; ; non, Hǫfuð) is an affluent peninsular village and outer suburb of Dublin, Ireland. The district as a whole occupies the greater part of the peninsula of Howth Head, which forms the northern boundary of Dublin Bay, and includes ...

, by whom he was the father of the barrister and writer Arthur P. I. Samuels (1886–1916) and Dorothy Samuels (1892–1942). The younger Arthur was an authority on

Edmund Burke Edmund Burke (; 12 January NS.html"_;"title="New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style">NS">New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style">NS/nowiki>_1729_–_9_July_1797)_was_an_NS.html"_;"title="New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style">N ...

and edited a collection of his correspondence and writings, which he had almost completed when his work was interrupted by the outbreak of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. He became a captain in the

Royal Irish Rifles The Royal Irish Rifles (became the Royal Ulster Rifles from 1 January 1921) was an infantry rifle regiment of the British Army, first created in 1881 by the amalgamation of the 83rd (County of Dublin) Regiment of Foot and the 86th (Royal County D ...

, and was killed on the Western Front in September 1916. His father completed his book on Burke, which was published in 1923. Young Arthur had married Dorothy Young of Milltown,

County Antrim County Antrim (named after the town of Antrim, ) is one of six counties of Northern Ireland and one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the county covers an area of and has a population o ...

, in 1913. Samuels' daughter, Dorothy Helen Daly (1892–1942), served during World War 2 as an ambulance driver with the

American Ambulance Great Britain American Ambulance, Great Britain (AAGB) (sometimes wrongly referred to as the Anglo-American Ambulance Unit) was a humanitarian organisation founded in 1940 by a group of Americans living in London for the purpose of providing emergency vehicl ...

. She was killed by a German air raid during the Exeter Blitz on 4 May 1942. She had married Herbert James Daly but was widowed at the time of her death.

References

Sources

* ''Who's Who of British Members of Parliament, Vol. III 1919–1945'', edited by M. Stenton & S. Lees (The Harvester Press 1979)

External links

*
Samuels' book on Home Rule Finance, 1912; online pdf
*Healy, Maurice ''The Old Munster Circuit'' Michael Joseph Ltd. London 1939. * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Samuels, Arthur Warren 1852 births 1925 deaths Alumni of Trinity College Dublin Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Dublin University Members of the Privy Council of Ireland Solicitors-General for Ireland Attorneys-General for Ireland Irish barristers Irish Conservative Party MPs Irish Unionist Party MPs UK MPs 1918–1922 Judges of the High Court of Justice in Ireland People from Dún Laoghaire 19th-century King's Counsel Irish Queen's Counsel Teachtaí Dála for Dublin University