Sir Horace Edmund Avory (31 August 1851 – 13 June 1935) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 criminal lawyer, jurist and Privy Counsellor.

Biography

He was the son of Henry Avory, clerk of the Central Criminal Court

Old Bailey

The Central Criminal Court in England and Wales, commonly known as the Old Bailey from the street in which it stands, is a court building in central London, one of a number of buildings housing the Crown Court...

. He was educated at King's College London

King's College London

King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...

, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

Corpus Christi College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It is notable as the only college founded by Cambridge townspeople: it was established in 1352 by the Guilds of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary...

, where he was captain of boats and took the degree of LL.B. in 1874. He became a barrister of the Inner Temple

Inner Temple

The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court in London. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wales, an individual must belong to one of these Inns...

 in 1875 and married Maria Louisa Castle in 1877. He was elected Bencher in 1908 and was knighted and made a judge, later to become a senior judge, of the King's Bench

King's Bench

The Queen's Bench is the superior court in a number of jurisdictions within some of the Commonwealth realms...

 division in 1910. He received a Hon.D.LL. degree in 1911 and was made Treasurer in 1929. He died at Rye, East Sussex

Rye, East Sussex

Rye is a small town in East Sussex, England, which stands approximately two miles from the open sea and is at the confluence of three rivers: the Rother, the Tillingham and the Brede...

.
Avory was one of the most noted English criminal lawyers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was involved in many sensational trials and became a household word as the most dreaded "hanging judge" of his age. He was called "thin lipped, cold, utterly unemotional, silent, and humorless, and relentless towards lying witnesses and brutal criminals" and "impervious to bluff and merciless to perjury". In private life, however, he showed a different face.

Famous cases in which he appeared include the trials of Adoph Beck

Adolph Beck case

The Adolf Beck case was a notorious incidence of wrongful conviction by mistaken identity, brought about by unreliable methods of identification, erroneous eyewitness testimony, and a rush to convict the accused...

, Sir Roger Casement, Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

 (as prosecuting counsel), Jean-Pierre Vaquier

Jean-Pierre Vaquier

Jean-Pierre Vaquier was a French inventor and murderer.He was tried for the murder of Alfred George Poynter Jones, landlord of the Blue Anchor pub in Byfleet, the husband of his mistress Mabel Jones, by poisoning him with strychnine.Vaquier had met Mabel Jones early in 1924 in Biarritz where she...

, Patrick Mahon and Clarence Hatry

Clarence Hatry

Clarence Charles Hatry was a company promoter, financier, bankrupt, bookseller and publisher. The fall of the Hatry group in September 1929 is widely credited as a contributing factor to the Wall Street Crash of 1929.J. K...

.

In recognition of his achievements, both Corpus Christi College (Cambridge), and The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, have student scholarships in the name of Horace Avory.

Death

According to Time magazine's report of his death, "Avory had gone for a chill walk during his Whitsun

Whitsun

Whitsun is the name used in the UK for the Christian festival of Pentecost, the seventh Sunday after Easter, which commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ's disciples...

tide holiday. That night an old friend, the Lord Chief Justice of England, Baron Hewart, called and as a precaution ordered two hot water bottles and personally tucked the Hanging Judge into bed. During the night he rolled off onto the floor, was found next morning entangled in a snarl of sheets and blankets, dead of heart failure and pernicious anemia

Pernicious anemia

Pernicious anemia is one of many types of the larger family of megaloblastic anemias...

."