William Wightman (judge)

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For other people with the same name, see William Wightman.

Sir William Wightman.jpg

Sir William Wightman (28 September 1784 – 10 December 1863) was a British judge.

Life[]

Wightman came of an old Dumfriesshire family, the son of William Wightman, gentleman, of St. Clement's, London, and his wife, Elisabeth. He was baptised at St Clement Danes at nearly 1 year old.[1] He was an undergraduate of University College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 23 March 1801, and on 21 June was elected to a Michel exhibition at Queen's College, graduating BA on 30 May 1805, and MA on 23 October 1809; from 1859 to 1863 he was an honorary fellow of his college.[2]

On 31 January 1804, Wightman entered Lincoln's Inn, and, after some years of practice as a special pleader, he was called to the bar in 1821. In 1830 he transferred himself to the Inner Temple and joined the Northern Circuit. He was known as a sound and clear-headed lawyer, and for several years held the post of junior counsel to the treasury. He was appointed a member of the commission of 1830 upon the practice of the common law courts, and of that of 1833 upon the proposal for a criminal law digest. He was engaged in many celebrated cases, particularly the prosecutions arising out of the Bristol riots; but, owing to an almost excessive modesty, was little known except to his profession. In February 1841 he was promoted to a judgeship of the Queen's Bench, on the resignation of Mr Justice Joseph Littledale, and was knighted on 28 April, and here he served as a judge for nearly 23 years. While on circuit at York, on 9 December 1863, he was seized with an attack of apoplexy, and died next day.[2]

Family[]

Wightman married in 1819, Charlotte Mary Baird, daughter of James Baird of Lasswade, near Edinburgh.[2][3] They had four daughters:

References[]

  1. ^ England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538-1975
  2. ^ a b c Lee, Sidney, ed. (1900). "Wightman, William" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 61. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  3. ^ Wyndham, Henry Saxe (2013). The Annals of Covent Garden Theatre from 1732 to 1897. Cambridge University Press. p. 305. ISBN 978-1-108-06868-0.
  4. ^ "Wood, Peter Almeric Leheup (WT837PA)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  5. ^ a b c Patrick McCarthy, Mrs. Matthew Arnold, Texas Studies in Literature and Language Vol. 12, No. 4 (Winter 1971), pp. 647–662, at pp. 652–653. Published by: University of Texas Press JSTOR 40755190
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1900). "Wightman, William". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 61. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

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