Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Foster, Thomas Campbell

1043798Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 20 — Foster, Thomas Campbell1889Francis Watt

FOSTER, THOMAS CAMPBELL (1813–1882), legal writer, son of John Foster of Leeds, born in 1813, was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1846, and went the northern and afterwards the north-eastern circuit. He stood as a liberal-conservative for Sheffield in 1867, but was unsuccessful. In 1868 he was appointed revising barrister for the West Riding boroughs. He resigned this appointment in 1875, upon being made queen's counsel and bencher of his inn. He was made recorder of Warwick in 1874. He was leading counsel for the crown at the trial of the murderer Charles Peace at Leeds. Foster was in bad health for a considerable time before his death, which took place at Orsett Terrace, Hyde Park, 1 July 1882. Foster wrote: 1. ‘Plain Instructions for the Attainment of an Improved, Complete, and Practical System of Shorthand,’ 1838. 2. ‘Letters on the Condition of the People of Ireland. Reprinted, with additions, from the “Times,”’ 1846. 3. ‘A Review of the Law relating to Marriages within the Prohibited Degrees of Affinity, and of the Canons and Social Considerations by which that Law is supposed to be Justified,’ 1847. 4. ‘A Treatise on the Writ of Scire Facias,’ 1851. 5. ‘Reports of Cases decided at Nisi Prius and at the Crown Side on Circuit, and Select Decisions at Chambers’ (with N. F. Finlason), 1858–1867.

[Times, 3 July 1882, p. 6; Brit. Mus. Cat.]

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