of such persons as chose to expose themselves and others to risks of infection. As recorder he discouraged prosecutions for such offences as keeping disorderly houses. Towards the end of his life he spoke with indignation of an Act forbidding—on the ground of public safety—the carrying of pistols without a licence. He was also a constant advocate in the House of Commons of trade unions, and of the reform of the laws then regulating the relation of master and servant. While at the bar he constantly defended trades unionists who were prosecuted for offences against the Conspiracy Acts, and sought to protect the funds of the union from legal distraint. As recorder of Liverpool he made himself the protagonist of the current reaction from greater to less severity in awarding punishment for crime. In his own court he carried the remission of severity to a pitch which his friends could not justify. He claimed that by his substitution of sentences of about three months' imprisonment for sentences of about seven years' penal servitude he greatly diminished crime within his jurisdiction; but in quoting statistics in support of this contention he made no allowance for the facts that the magistrates, disapproving of his intemperance in reform, committed to the assizes many persons who would naturally have been sent for trial to his sessions, and themselves dealt summarily with very many more. He proposed legislation in favour of short sentences, and in 1897 he founded the Romilly Society to reform the criminal law and prison administration. He sought to establish a court of appeal in criminal cases. He was a warm advocate of an extension of the suffrage to all adults, including women.
Hopwood was a man of handsome features and good presence, wore a full black beard, and preserved an almost juvenile complexion to the end of his life. He had the power of attracting the warm personal regard of many of his friends who considered his exaggerated insistence upon his own opinions to be mischievous. He died unmarried at Northwick Lodge, St. John's Wood Road, N.W., on 14 Oct. 1904, and his remains, after cremation at Golder's Green, were buried in a family grave at Kensal Green. A portrait in oils by Jamyn Brooks belongs to Hopwood's younger brother, Canon Hopwood, Louth, Lincolnshire.
Hopwood edited:
- 'Observations on the Constitution of the Middle Temple,' 1896.
- 'A Calendar of the Middle Temple Records,' 1903.
- 'Middle Temple Records,' 1904.
[The Times, 17 and 19 Oct. 1904; Men of the Time, 1898; Foster's Men at the Bar; personal knowledge.]
HORNBY, JAMES JOHN (1826–1909), provost of Eton, born at Winwick, Lancashire, on 18 Dee. 1826, was younger son of Admiral Sir Phipps Hornby [q. v.] by his wife Sophia Maria, daughter of Lieutenant-general John Burgoyne (1722-1792) [q. v.]. Hornby was entered as an oppidan at Eton in 1838, and after a successful career as a scholar and as a cricketer went to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1845, where he enjoyed similar success in the schools and as an athlete. He gained a first class in the final classical school in 1849, and rowed in the Oxford Eight in 1849 and 1851. Graduating B.A. in 1849, in which year he was elected a founder's fellow of Brasenose College, and proceeding M.A. in 1851, he was principal of Bishop Cosin's Hall at Durham University from 1853 to 1864, when he returned to Oxford and took up work at Brasenose as junior bursar. In 1867 he was appointed second master at Winchester, but shortly after was selected for the important post of headmaster of Eton on the resignation of Archdeacon Balston. For several generations the head-master had been an Eton colleger and scholar of King's College, Cambridge, and at Eton was the subordinate officer of the provost. Since 1861 a royal commission had been engaged in an inquiry into the administration of the great public schools of England with special reference to Eton College. As a result of this commission the whole administration of Eton College was changed, and placed in the hands of a new governing body under new statutes. The old connection between Eton and King's College, Cambridge, was made less binding, and the powers of the provost of Eton were very considerably curtailed. The headmaster's position became one of increased independent authority. In these altered circumstances Hornby entered on his duties as headmaster of Eton early in 1868. The appointment of an oppidan, an Oxonian, and a gentleman of high breeding and aristocratic birth, who had not served his apprenticeship as an Eton master, marked the new era in the history of the school. In accordance with the spirit of the age and the new statutes many reforms were introduced by Hornby into the school curriculum. He was, however, a progressive rather than a radical
