Archibald Levin Smith
British judge and rower (1836-1901)
Sir Archibald Levin Smith (26 August 1836 – 20 October 1901) was a British judge and a rower who competed at Henley and in the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.
Biography
Smith was the son of Francis Smith, J.P. of Salt Hill, Chichester and his wife Mary Ann Levin. He was baptised at New Fishbourne, West Sussex although his mother was the daughter of a Polish-Jewish immigrant. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. He suffered from the pituitary disorder, acromegaly, which caused him to grow to nearly 7 feet (2.1 m) tall. Athletic as well as tall, he rowed for Cambridge in the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race in the 1857, 1858 and 1859 races. Oxford won in 1857 and Cambridge in 1858. In 1858 he was in the winning crews at Henley Royal Regatta in the Grand Challenge Cup with the C.U.B.C. and in the Visitors Challenge Cup and the Wyfold Challenge Cup with First Trinity Boat Club.
In the 1859 Boat Race "the race was rowed in a gale of wind, and the Cambridge boat filled and sank between Barnes Bridge and the finish.... Smith alone of the Cambridge oarsmen could not swim, and sat stolidly rowing until, when the water was up to his neck, he was rescued." In later years he regularly bet a new hat on the Boat Race with W.B. Woodgate "on principle and from patriotism to his flag, even when public favour and market odds might seem to be dead against the hopes of his own club."
Smith was admitted at the Inner Temple on 27 May 1856 and was called to the Bar on 17 November 1860.
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This entry incorporates text from “Archibald Levin Smith” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.