John Hamilton, 1st Viscount Sumner

Hamilton was born in Chorlton-upon-Medlock, Lancashire,[1] the second son of Andrew Hamilton, an iron merchant of Manchester,[2] and his wife, Frances, daughter of Joseph Sumner.[3] He was baptised at the Church of St Wilfrid, Northenden.[4]

Hamilton was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Balliol College, Oxford.[1] In 1883, he was called to the bar, Inner Temple.[2] Hamilton was a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, for seven years from 1892 and was nominated an honorary fellow in 1909.[3] He received an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by the University of Edinburgh in 1913 and by the University of Manchester in 1919.[5] One year later, Hamilton obtained also an Honorary Doctorate of Civil Law by the University of Oxford.[5]

Hamilton joined in the Northern Circuit and became a King's Counsel in 1901.[2] He was elected a standing counsel to the Oxford University in 1906, a post he held for the next three years.[5] On his appointment as Judge of the High Court of Justice (King's Bench Division) in 1909, he was knighted and invested a bencher.[2] In 1912 he became a Lord Justice of Appeal and sworn of the Privy Council.[2] Already in the following year, Hamilton became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and created a life peer as Baron Sumner, of Ibstone, in the County of Buckingham.[6] He was further honoured, when on 31 January 1927, he created a hereditary peerage as Viscount Sumner, of Ibstone, in the County of Buckingham.[7] Hamilton retired as judge in 1930.[1]

In 1908, Hamilton was Inspector in the Swansea Education Dispute.[2] In the House of Lords, he was chairman of the Working Classes Cost of Living, the British Cellulose Enquiry and the British and Foreign Legal Procedure committees.[2] Hamilton took part at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as delegate of the reparations commission, for which he was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) in the 1920 Birthday Honours.[2] In the next year, he chaired the Royal Commission on Compensation for Suffering and Damage by Enemy Action.[5]

In 1892, he married Maude Margaret Todd, the second daughter of Reverend John Wood Todd,[3] a Baptist minister who with his wife founded what became Tudor Hall School. Hamilton's marriage was childless, and with Hamilton's death, the viscountcy became extinct.[3]

In 2009, a biography of Lord Sumner was published by Anthony Lentin.[8]

• Bowman v The Secular Society (1917)
• Elder Dempster & Co v Paterson Zochonis & Co (1924)

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by John Hamilton, 1st Viscount Sumner
• Portraits of John Hamilton, 1st Viscount Sumner at the National Portrait Gallery, London