Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jessel, George
JESSEL, Sir GEORGE (1824–1883), master of the rolls, youngest son of Zadok Aaron Jessel of Savile Row, London, and of Putney, a substantial Jewish merchant, was born in London on 13 Feb. 1824. He was educated at Mr. Neumegen's school for Jews at Kew and afterwards at University College, London, matriculating at the university of London in 1840. On 15 April 1842 he was admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn; in 1843 he graduated B.A. at the university of London, taking honours in mathematics, natural philosophy, vegetable physiology, and structural botany, and a prize in the two latter subjects; in 1844 he proceeded M.A., with the gold medal in mathematics and natural philosophy; and in 1846 he was elected to a fellowship at University College. On 4 May 1847 he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, and at once took spacious chambers in Stone Buildings, which he retained until his elevation to the bench. He was a pupil of E. J. Lloyd (afterwards Q.C.); of the eminent conveyancer, Peter Bellinger Brodie [q. v.]; and of Mr. (afterwards Sir) Barnes Peacock [q. v.] He quickly obtained a fair share of practice, both as a conveyancer and in the rolls court, making 52 guineas in his first year, 346 guineas in his second, and 795 guineas in his third. His rise was in no way due to Jewish interest; his start was given him by the firm of Budd & Hayes (now Budd, Son, & Brodie), to which he was introduced by his friend and fellow-pupil (afterwards his chief secretary), George Thomas Jenkins. His professional income soon reached the figure of 1,000l., at which it remained stationary for some years. While still young he visited Turkey and America.
Gradually Jessel acquired the position of leading junior in the rolls court, and in 1861 he applied for silk, which Lord Westbury refused him, nor did he obtain it until four years later. The delay was, as he afterwards acknowledged, rather to his advantage than not, as it enabled him to acquire a far more minute knowledge of chancery practice than he would otherwise have done. On taking silk he was elected a bencher of his inn, 19 April 1865. Returned to parliament in the liberal interest for Dover in December 1868, he attracted the notice of Mr. Gladstone by two very learned and able speeches on the Bankruptcy Bill of the following year, and was appointed solicitor-general on 10 Nov. 1871, in succession to Sir John Duke (now Lord) Coleridge, who became attorney-general. His tenure of office was rendered more than usually onerous by the Geneva arbitration, and he discharged his duties with conspicuous ability. At this time he was making between 20,000l. and 23,000l. per annum. He succeeded Lord Romilly as master of the rolls on 30 Aug. 1873, was sworn of the privy council, and resigned his seat in parliament, though not legally bound so to do.
His elevation to the bench coincided with the commencement of a new era in the history of English law. The first Judicature Act had just been passed; the first step taken towards the fusion of law and equity into one harmonious system. It did not come into operation until 1 Nov. 1875, when it was linked with an amending and extending act, one of the clauses of which reconstituted the court of appeal and made the master of the rolls an ex-officio member of it. By virtue of his office the master of the rolls had precedence next after the lord chief justice. Thus, on the Judicature Acts coming into operation, Jessel, while continuing to sit as a judge of first instance at the rolls court, became the ordinary president of the chancery division of the court of appeal and of the rule committee. At the same time the power of making rules of procedure for the high court of justice and court of appeal was delegated to a committee of judges, of whom the master of the rolls was one. By the second Judicature Act, 1881, he was, much against his will, relieved of his duties at the rolls court. Jessel was also ex officio one of the commissioners of patents under the Patent Law Amendment Act, 1852, to whose duties was added in 1875 the superintendence of the registration of trade-marks, until the transference of those functions to the board of trade in 1883. From 1873 to 1883 Jessel was in fact the working head of the Patent Office.
Jessel brought to the practice of the law the aptitudes of a man of business; a logical faculty naturally acute and sharpened by severe discipline; a knowledge of English law none the less wide, profound, and minute because he had found time to master the general principles of the Roman law and the modern codes founded thereon, and could estimate more justly than most Englishmen the relative merits and defects of the two systems. His clear and logical intellect revolted against the anomalies of the English system, far more numerous when he began to practise than at present. ‘Only in a sense,’ he said in his speech on the Bankruptcy Bill of 1869, ‘was it true that our common law was not based on the Roman law, for we had used the Roman law as the Turks used the remains of the splendid temples of antiquity. We had pulled out the stones and used them in constructing buildings which we called our own’ (Hansard, 3rd ser. cxcv. 143). And he went on to urge the remodelling of the bankruptcy law upon the principles of the Roman cessio bonorum as exemplified in the continental codes, besides certain reforms in the administration of estates in chancery.
However impatient of technicalities and anomalies, Jessel was nevertheless in practice the most practical of lawyers. His mind was a veritable magazine of case-law. His knowledge of affairs was extraordinarily wide and accurate, his apprehension so quick as to seem like intuition. Physically he was indolent, and extremely averse to writing, with which his powerful memory enabled him to a great extent to dispense, so that his briefs usually left his chambers almost as clean as they entered them. Though he rarely took notes while at the bar, his speeches in reply to his opponents' arguments were none the less effective, and after his elevation to the bench it commonly happened that the plaintiff's counsel had hardly opened his case before the master of the rolls was pressing him with questions which showed that he had already mastered it in all its bearings. His mind once made up he became rather impatient of argument, and was sometimes unduly brusque in manner (except towards young and inexperienced counsel, to whom he was always very considerate), partly no doubt from sheer weariness, but mainly from an instinctive love of despatch. Never while at the rolls court did he reserve judgment—not even in the great Epping Forest case (Commissioners of Sewers v. Glasse) in 1874, where the arguments lasted twenty-three days and the evidence filled several folio volumes—and only twice, and then only at the request of his colleagues, in the court of appeal. His judgments, which were always remarkably full and lucid, were rarely appealed from and still more rarely reversed. His self-confidence was very great. ‘I may be wrong,’ he said once while solicitor-general, ‘and sometimes am, but I never have any doubts.’ This confident habit of mind with his extraordinary love of despatch led to his describing with perhaps undue depreciation Lord Eldon as ‘the dubitative chancellor,’ who might have sat to a painter for the impersonation of the law's delay. Lord Hardwicke he considered the greatest of English equity judges, Lord Cairns he was inclined to place second, and himself third. It is certain that the final estimate of his powers will be a very high one.
Jessel took for many years an active part in the management of the university of London, of which he was a senator from 1862 and vice-chancellor from 1881 until his death, and for which he prepared the Brown Institute committee's report on the treatment of the diseases and injuries of animals. He sat on the royal commission appointed on 2 May 1881 to inquire into the working of the medical acts, and was mainly responsible for the report laid on the table of the House of Lords in the following year, on which the Medical Act of 1886 was based. In 1883 he was chosen treasurer of Lincoln's Inn. He was also vice-president of the council of legal education and a fellow of the Royal Society. In the course of 1883 Jessel suffered much from diabetes, but continued to discharge his duties with characteristic assiduity and efficiency. He sat in court for the last time on 16 March, took to his bed next day, and died on the 21st. He was interred on the 23rd in the cemetery of the United Synagogue at Willesden, in the presence of a large concourse of mourners. Jessel, although a lax observer of Jewish religious rites, was a good Hebrew scholar and well read in the critical controversies relating to the Old Testament. He retained his interest in scientific botany to the last. Jessel married, on 20 Aug. 1856, Amelia, eldest daughter of Joseph Moses of London, who survived him. After his marriage he resided at Cleveland Square, Hyde Park, whence on his elevation to the bench he removed to 10 Hyde Park Gardens. His country seat was Ladham House, Goudhurst, Kent. He left two sons and three daughters. A baronetcy was conferred upon his heir, Charles James Jessel, on 25 May 1883.
In person Jessel was about the middle height and in later life inclined to corpulence. He had dark hair, grey eyes, a fresh complexion, a straight nose, and a somewhat large mouth. His face in repose had a rather heavy look, but became wonderfully animated in argument. His bust by Mr. W. R. Ingram is in the lobby of the Royal Courts of Justice.
‘Analyses and Digest of the Decisions of Sir George Jessel, late Master of the Rolls, with full Notes, References, Comments, and copious Index,’ 8vo, by Apsley Petre Peter, was published in London in 1883.
[Times, 23 March 1883; Solicitors' Journal, 24 March 1883; Law Times, 31 March 1883; private information.]