Frederick Falkiner (judge)


Sir Frederick Richard Falkiner PC, QC was an Irish lawyer, judge and author.

Life

Falkiner was the third son of Richard Falkiner, of Mount Falcon, County Tipperary, Ireland, and was educated at the University of Dublin, from which he graduated in 1852, the same year that he was called to the Irish Bar. He became a Queen's Counsel in 1867 and was appointed as Law Adviser to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1875.
The following year he was appointed Recorder of Dublin, a judicial position he held for almost three decades. He became a bencher of King's Inns in 1880 and was knighted in 1896.
Falkiner held briefs in many important cases. In 1876 he was appointed recorder of Dublin, on the death of Sir Frederick Shaw, and earned a reputation for humanity. During his early years as recorder he was called upon to decide intricate points in the licensing laws; Maurice Healy remarked that he was reluctant to add to Dublin's licensed premises. He took an interest in the subject of workmen's compensation, and when Joseph Chamberlain was engaged in drafting the Workmen's Compensation Act 1897 he adopted several of Falkiner's suggestions. He retired from his office on 22 Jan 1905, when he was made a privy councillor. Falkiner was one of the most prominent members of the general synod of the Church of Ireland, and in the debates of that body, especially on financial questions, he frequently intervened with much effect. He was chancellor to the bishops of Tuam, Clogher, Kilmore, and Derry and Raphoe. He was also chairman of the board of King's Hospital, better known as tho Blue Coat School. Of this school he published in 1906 a history, which is in effect a history of Dublin from the Restoration to the Victorian era. Falkiner pursued literary interests; he wrote on Jonathan Swift's portraits, and a collection of his 'Literary Miscellanies' was published posthumously in 1909.
Falkiner was notoriously anti-Jewish in his judgements, which was most visible, when he was a judge in a case against Henry Kahn in 1902. While this caused a public outrage, he ultimately retained his position. In his capacity as Recorder of Dublin he is both mentioned and directly appears in James Joyce's Ulysses — in Chapter 8, Chapter 12 and Chapter 15. In a hallucination he sentences Leopold Bloom to the same punishment as Kahn - Mountjoy Prison.
Following his retirement as Recorder of Dublin in June 1905 he was made a member of the Irish Privy Council. He was also a governor of the King's Hospital school in Dublin.
He died in retirement at Funchal, Madeira, on 23 March 1908.

Family

He married twice: in 1861 Adelaide Matilda, third daughter of Thomas Sadleir of Ballinderry Park, county Tipperary ; and Robina Hall, third daughter of N. B. M'Intire of Cloverhill, county Dublin. By his first wife he had issue three sons, including Caesar Litton Falkiner, and four daughters.
His second son, Caesar Litton Falkiner, was a distinguished lawyer and scholar.

Works

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