Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hayes, Edmund

1412087Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 25 — Hayes, Edmund1891John Andrew Hamilton

HAYES, EDMUND (1804–1867), Irish judge, eldest son of William Hayes of Millmount, near Dublin, was born in 1804. He was educated at the Belfast Academical Institution, and in 1820 entered at Trinity College, Dublin, where he proceeded B.A. in 1825, and LL.B. and LL.D. in 1832 (Todd, Cat. Grad. Dublin, p. 263). In 1827 he was called to the Irish bar, and joined the north-eastern circuit, but subsequently transferred himself to the home circuit. He was appointed by the benchers of the King's Inns lecturer in constitutional and criminal law, wrote a treatise on Irish criminal law (Dublin, 1843, 8vo, 2nd edition), and in 1837 published reports of cases in the Irish exchequer, 1830 to 1832, and in 1843, with Thomas Jones, a continuation from 1832 to 1834. He was appointed a Q.C. in 1852, and was law adviser to the crown under Lord Derby's first administration, and again in 1858, and was subsequently promoted to be Irish solicitor-general. In 1859 he succeeded Mr. Justice Crampton in the court of queen's bench, but was compelled in 1866 to absent himself owing to ill-health, and finally resigned in Michaelmas term of that year, dying at his house at Bray, near Dublin, 29 April 1867. He married, first, Grace Mary Anne, daughter of John Shaw of Donlagh, county Dublin, in 1835, by whom he had nine children; and secondly, Mary Harriett Tranchell, widow of Lieutenant James Shaw, by whom he had one son.

[Law Times, 1 June 1867; Gent. Mag. 1867, i. 826; Times, 1 May 1867.]

J. A. H.