Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Leach, Thomas

by Gordon Goodwin

LEACH, THOMAS (1746–1818), legal writer, born in 1746, was called to the bar from the Middle Temple. In 1790 he was appointed police magistrate at Hatton Garden, and was also chairman of the county court of requests in Fulwood's Rents, Holborn. He was an able lawyer, but ill-health made him irritable. He sent in his resignation in November 1818, and died unmarried on 31 Dec. following.

He published:

1. ‘Considerations on the matter of Libel, suggested by Mr. Fox's Notice in Parliament of an intended Motion on that subject,’ 8vo, London, 1791.
2. ‘Reports of Sir George Croke,’ 4th edit. 3 vols. 8vo, London, 1790–2.
3. ‘Modern Reports, or Select Cases adjudged in the Courts of King's Bench, Chancery, Common Pleas, and Exchequer, from the Restoration of Charles II to the 28th of George II,’ 5th edit. 12 vols. 8vo, London, 1793–6.
4. ‘Sir B. Shower's Reports of Cases adjudged in the Court of King's Bench during the reigns of Charles I, James II, and William III,’ 2nd edit. 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1794 (3rd edit. 1836).
5. ‘Hawkins's Pleas of the Crown, 7th edit., digested under proper heads,’ 4 vols. 8vo, London, 1795.
6. ‘Cases in Crown Law determined by the Twelve Judges, by the Court of King's Bench, and by Commissioners of Oyer and Terminer, and General Gaol Delivery, 1730–1815,’ London, 1789, 1792, 1800, and in 2 vols. 8vo, 1815.

Leach was for some years editor of the ‘Whitehall Evening Post.’ His portrait has been engraved by Audinet.

[Gent. Mag. 1818, pt. ii. p. 647; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits.]

G. G.