John Stapylton Grey Pemberton

Pemberton was educated at Eton and New College, Oxford, gaining his BA in 1884 and proceeding to an MA in 1888. He won a fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford in 1885 and was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1889.[1] In December 1883, shortly before completing his degree, he became a magistrate for County Durham.[2]

Pemberton was the eldest son of Richard Lawrence Pemberton and Jane Emma Pemberton (née Stapylton). He married Janet Maud Marshall in 1890 in Llanfairfechan.[3] She died aged 25 in 1892.[4] He married again, to Nira Ross, in 1895.[1]

Pemberton stood for the Conservatives in Sunderland in 1892 before winning one of the two seats in 1900, along with Theodore Doxford, also Conservative.[1] Both were defeated in the 1906 election, when the seats were split between the Liberals and Labour.[5] In the 1910 election, he broke with his party over free trade and backed the Liberal candidate for Sunderland.[6]

In 1911 Pemberton became President of the Council of Durham Colleges, which ran the Durham division of the federal University of Durham, in succession to Bishop George Nickson.[7] He held this position until the changes in the University's constitution in 1937, when a full-time head of the Durham division (the Warden of the Durham Colleges) was appointed.[8]

In 1918 he was appointed Vice-Chancellor of Durham University for a two-year term.[9] In 1924 he became Recorder for Durham City in succession to Sir Francis Greenwell.[10] In 1931 he became chair of the Durham Quarter Sessions, having previously been vice-chair. He served in this role until he stepped down on his 78th birthday, in 1938.[11]

In addition to these, Pemberton also served on Durham County Council and as chair of the governors of Sherburn Hospital. He died at home near Durham in 1940.[8]