Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Winter, James Spearman
WINTER, Sir JAMES SPEARMAN (1845–1911), premier of Newfoundland, born at Lamaline, Newfoundland, on 1 Jan. 1845, was son of James Winter, of the customs service at St. John's, Newfoundland. Educated at St. John's at the General Protestant and Church of England Academies, James went at the age of fourteen into a merchant's office, where he remained for two years, and at the age of sixteen was articled to (Sir) Hugh Hoyles, afterwards chief justice of Newfoundland. He was enrolled as a solicitor in 1866, was called to the bar in 1867, became Q.C. in 1880, and at his death was the senior member of the Newfoundland bar and president of the Newfoundland Law Society.
He entered the legislature as member for the Burin district in 1874, when he was twenty-nine years of age. In 1877–8 he was speaker of the House of Assembly. He was solicitor-general from 1882 to 1885 in Sir William Whiteway's first administration and attorney-general from 1885 to 1889 in the Thorburn administration. In 1893 he was appointed a judge of the supreme court of Newfoundland, but resigned the office in 1896, returned to politics as leader of the opposition, and in 1897 became premier of Newfoundland. He held the premiership, combining with it the post of attorney-general and later that of minister of justice, till 1900, when he practically retired from political life. His term of office as premier is chiefly noteworthy for the conclusion of the warmly discussed Reid contract of 1898 [see Reid, Sir Robert Gillespie, Suppl. II.]
Winter represented Newfoundland at the fisheries conference at Washington in 1887–8, when Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Boyard negotiated a treaty which the senate of the United States failed to ratify; for his services he was made a K.C.M.G. In 1890 he went to London as one of the unofficial representatives of the Patriotic Association in connection with the French fishery question; in 1898, when premier, he visited London again on the same errand, and in the same year represented Newfoundland at the Anglo-American conference at Quebec. In 1910 he was one of the counsel on the British side before the Hague tribunal on the occasion of the North Atlantic fisheries arbitration between Great Britain and the United States.
He died at Toronto, while on a visit to a married daughter, at midnight on 6–7 Oct. 1911. Winter married in 1881 Emily Julia, daughter of Captain William J. Coen, governor of the Newfoundland penitentiary. She predeceased him in 1908, leaving four sons and four daughters.
[Evening Telegram, St. John's, Newfoundland, 7 Oct. 1911; The Daily News, St. John's, Newfoundland, and The Times, 9 Oct. 1911; Colonial Office List.]