[NI0576]
Author of The Story of a Devonshire House
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The Story of a Devonshire House,
London, T. F. Unwin, 1905.
329 p. 36 pl. (incl. front., ports.) fold. geneal. tab. 23 cm.
Subjects: Coleridge family.
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Coleridge, [Bernard John Seymour Coleridge], 2d baron, 1851-
LanguageCall NumberLCCNDewey DecimalISBN/ISSNEnglish (eng)DA306.C6 C6
06014479 --
Bernard Coleridge was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Oxford. He obtained a second class in modern history in 1875 and amongst other athletic achievements, became captain of his college boat club. He was made an honorary fellow of the college in 1909. Coleridge was called to the bar in 1877 by the Middle Temple of which he was later a bencher (1894) and treasurer (1919). He joined the Western circuit and there acquired a large local practice chiefly in criminal cases. In politics he inherited his father's liberalism and was elected member of parliament for the Attercliffe division of Sheffield in 1885 holding the seat for nine years. On the death of his father in 1894, Coleridge succeeded to the peerage. In 1907 he was appointed to a judgeship in the King's Bench division until his resignation in 1923. It was the first time in the annals of English law that father, son and grandson successively became judges.
Apart from his political and judicial career, Coleridge lived a busy and cultured life. He was chairman of Devon quarter-sessions and served regularly in that capacity even while he was a judge. From 1912 to 1918 he was chairman of the Coal Conciliation Board of the Federated Districts. he was a zealous humanitarian, a strong anti-vivisectionist and a opponent of the punishment of flogging although he favoured the retention of the capital sentence for the most heinous crimes.
Loyalty to his birthplace led him to found and to become the first president of the Old Ottregian Society and being himself a talented musician, he composed "The Ottery Song" which is sung at its gatherings. He published: Ottery St. Mary and its Memories (1904), The Story of a Devonshire House (1905) and This for Remembrances (1925).
Coleridge retired from the bench owing to ill-health in 1923 and lived at his Devonshire home, The Chanter's House, Ottery St. Mary where he died on September 4, 1927.
(source: National Dictionary of Biographies)