CHESSAR, JANE AGNES (1835–1880), teacher, was born in Edinburgh in 1835, and after attending private school and classes in that city went to London in 1851 in order to gain special training as a teacher. Early in the next year she took charge of a class in the Home and Colonial Training College. During the fifteen years she held this appointment she did much to raise the college to the highest place among such institutions by her skill as a teacher and by the moral influence she exercised over her pupils. In 1866 weakness of health obliged her to resign her position on the staff of the college, and she then employed her time in giving lectures and in private tuition. She was elected a member of the London School Board in 1873, and in that capacity did much useful work in connection with the health and domestic training of girls. In 1875 she was forced to leave England for a warmer climate, and did not seek re-election. Her death, which was caused by cerebral apoplexy, took place on 3 Sept. 1880 at Brussels, whither she had gone to assist at an educational congress, he edited Mrs. Somerville's 'Physical Geography' and Hughes's 'Physical Geography,' and wrote much for the 'Queen' and other newspapers.
[Educational Times, 1 Oct. 1880; Athenæum, 18 Sept. 1880.]
CHESSHER, ROBERT (1750–1831), surgeon, was born in 1750 at Hinckley, Leicestershire. His father dying during his infancy, his mother married a surgeon named Whalley, residing also at Hinckley; and to him, after education at Bosworth school, young Chessher was apprenticed. He early showed aptitude for improvising supports for fractured limbs, especially for the purpose of obviating contraction of muscles and skin. At the age of eighteen he became a pupil of Dr. Denman, the eminent London accoucheur, attending William Hunter's and Fordyce's lectures. He afterwards became house surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital, but before long returned to Hinckley, on his stepfather's death, and remained there, unmarried, during the remainder of his life, resisting solicitations to return to London. He died on 31 Jan. 1831.
Chessher was a very ingenious mechanician, employing a mechanic named Reeves to carry out his ideas. After 1790 he applied a double-inclined plane to support fractured legs with great success. He invented several instruments for supporting weak spines and for relieving the spinal column from the weight of the head, and for applying gentle steady friction to contracted limbs or muscles. It is to be regretted that his manuscript cases were not published, but his retiring manners prevented his merits from being fully known. His personal character appears to have been most estimable.
[Annual Biography and Obituary, 1832, pp. 396-408.]
CHESSHYRE, Sir JOHN (1662–1738), lawyer, son of Thomas Chesshyre of Halwood, near Runcorn, Cheshire, was born on 11 Nov. 1662, entered as a student at the Inner Temple on 16 June 1696, took the degree of serjeant-at-law on 8 June 1705, became queen's Serjeant on 27 Nov. 1711, king's serjeant on 5 Jan. 1714, and king's prime serjeant on 19 Jan. 1727. In 1719 he was associated with Attorney-general Lechmere in the prosecution of John Matthews, a lad of nineteen, who was indicted of high treason under the Act of Succession, 4 Anne c. 8, for publishing a Jacobite tract, entitled 'Ex ore tuo te judico, vox populi vox Dei.' The case was tried at the Old Bailey before Lord-chief-justice King, Lord-chief-baron Bury, and nine puisne judges, and the boy was found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed. Another case in which Chesshyre was engaged was the trial of two bailiffs for stabbing a gentleman named Lutterell, who had struck one of them when under arrest. Lutterell died of his wounds. The lord chief justice, before whom the case was tried in the king's bench in 1721–2, summed up decidedly in favour of the prisoners, and the jury returning a verdict of manslaughter, they claimed benefit of clergy, and escaped with burnt hands. Chesshyre was also engaged in the prosecution of the Jacobite conspirator Richard Layer [q. v.] in 1723. The next case of public interest in which he was engaged was the prosecution of the notorious warden of the Fleet Prison, John Huggins, for the murder of a debtor named Edward Arne, who had died after confinement in an unwholesome room. Huggins denied that he had given authority for his imprisonment. The jury returned a special verdict, which was removed by certiorari into the king's bench, and there elaborately argued by Willis and Eyre, after which it was argued at Serjeants' Inn by Chesshire, the attorney and solicitor general, and other counsel. In the end Lord-chief-justice Raymond held that there was no evidence of consent on the part of Huggins, and he was acquitted. From extracts from the Serjeant's fee-book, communicated to
