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Harold Danckwerts

British judge (1888-1978)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ5660433 ↗
Source-derived summary

Sir Harold Otto Danckwerts PC (23 February 1888 – 12 June 1978) was a British judge.

Career

One of three sons and one daughter of William Otto Adolph Julius Danckwerts (German, but raised in South Africa and naturalised British) and Mary Caroline Lowther, Danckwerts was educated at Winchester College, Balliol College, Oxford, and Harvard University. He was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1913. In World War I he served with the East Riding of Yorkshire Yeomanry and the Machine Gun Corps, achieving the rank of Captain, and was mentioned in despatches.

He was appointed a Justice of the Chancery Division of the High Court of England and Wales on 1 June 1949 and received the customary knighthood shortly after. He was promoted to be a Lord Justice of Appeal in the Court of Appeal of England and Wales on 9 January 1961. Following that he was made a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom (principally entitling him to the prefix of Rt. Hon. and to sit in its overseas-remitted judicial final appeal hearings). He retired from his judicial offices on 2 June 1969.

Editorial summary

“Harold Danckwerts” enters the record as british judge (1888-1978). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Harold, Danckwerts and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1888, 1978, 1913, 1949—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1888-02-23. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Harold, Danckwerts and British.
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“Harold Danckwerts” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Harold, Danckwerts and British provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5660433. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1888, 1978, 1913 and 1949.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Harold Danckwerts” 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.