The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Cockle, Sir James
Cockle, Sir James, F.R.S., first Chief Justice of Queensland, second son of James Cockle, of Great Oakley, near Harwich, in Essex, was born on Jan. 14th, 1819, and educated at Stormont House, Bayswater, the Charterhouse, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1841 and M.A. in 1845. He entered at the Middle Temple in April 1838, and was called to the bar in Nov. 1846, practising as a special pleader and going the Midland Circuit. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1854, and of the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1856. In Nov. 1862 he was appointed first Chief Justice of Queensland, and gained a high repute for judicial learning and impartiality. He was knighted in July 1869, and visited Europe in 1878. Sir James resigned in 1879, and has since resided in London. Whilst in Australia he was President of the Queensland Philosophical Society, and has been a member of the Royal Society since June 1865, and of the Royal Astronomical Society since March 1854. Sir James, who has published a work on mathematics, was for several years Honorary Treasurer of the London Savage Club, and was one of the Commissioners for Queensland at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in 1886. He married on August 22nd, 1855, Adelaide Catherine, eldest surviving daughter of the late Henry Wilkin, of Walton, near Ipswich, in Suffolk.