Francis Jeune, 1st Baron St Helier
British judge (1843–1905)
Francis Henry Jeune, 1st Baron St Helier, (17 March 1843 – 9 April 1905), known as Sir Francis Jeune (1891–1905), was a British judge. He was President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice (1892–1905) and Judge Advocate General (1892–1905). According to, F. L. Wiswall Jr., "For better or for worse, it is fair to say that Sir Francis Henry Jeune had a greater influence upon the development of the Law of Admiralty than any single common lawyer since Coke."
Background and education
Jeune was the son of The Right Reverend Francis Jeune, Bishop of Peterborough, and Margaret, daughter of Henry Symons. Educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford, he was President of the Oxford Union in 1864. During his time at the Union the question of what to do about the fading murals in the debating chamber recently painted by artists associated with the Pre-Raphaelites came up for discussion. Jeune declared them to be 'hideous' and said he did not care what became of them. In 1868, he was called to the Bar, Inner Temple.
Judicial career
In 1888, Jeune became a Queen's Counsel. In 1891, he was appointed as a Judge in the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court and knighted. In June 1892, he became President of the Division in succession to Sir Charles Parker Butt and sworn of the Privy Council.
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This entry incorporates text from “Francis Jeune, 1st Baron St Helier” 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.