Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Crowder, Richard Budden

772059Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 13 — Crowder, Richard Budden1888John Andrew Hamilton

CROWDER, Sir RICHARD BUDDEN (1795–1859), judge, eldest son of Mr. William Henry Crowder of Montagu Place, Bloomsbury, was born in 1795. He was educated at Eton, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge, but appears to have taken no degree. In 1821 he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, and joined the western circuit, and both on circuit and in London enjoyed a good practice, particularly through his aptitude for influencing juries. In 1837 he was appointed a queen's counsel, in August 1846 he succeeded Sir Charles Wetherell as recorder of Bristol, and for a lone time he held the appointments of counsel to the admiralty and judge-advocate of the fleet. In January 1849 he was elected in the liberal interest for the borough of Liskeard in Cornwall, in succession to Mr. Charles Buller, and he continued to hold the seat until March 1854, when he was appointed a puisne justice in the court of common pleas in succession to Mr. Justice Talfourd, and was knighted. In 1859 he was suffering from an inveterate ague, which affected his heart, and, although a long vacation at Brighton enabled him to resume his seat on the bench during the Michaelmas term, and even to sit at chambers on the day but one before his death, he died suddenly on 5 Dec. He never married.

[Foss's Lives of the Judges; Times, 6 Dec. 1859; Law Mag. new ser. v. 345; Jurist, 10 Dec. 1859; Ann. Reg. 1859.]

J. A. H.