Charles Hemphill, 1st Baron Hemphill

Charles Hare Hemphill, 1st Baron Hemphill, PC QC (August 1822 – 4 March 1908), was an Irish politician and barrister.

Hemphill was born in County Tyrone, Ireland. He was the son of John and the novelist Barbara Hemphill. He was made a Queen's Counsel (QC) shortly before being appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1892, a post he held until 1895. He then sat as Member of Parliament for North Tyrone from 1895 to 1906, after which he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Hemphill, of Rathkenny and of Cashel in the County of Tipperary. While most Irish Law Officers could confidently look forward to promotion to the Bench, Hemphill's age apparently ruled him out of serious consideration.

As Solicitor-General, he is remembered mainly for the somewhat malicious "compliments" paid to him by the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Sir Peter O'Brien, in the celebrated 1894 case of R. (Bridgeman) v. Drury. Hemphill, who appeared for Dublin Corporation, had argued, apparently with a good deal of hyperbole, that the members of the Corporation were entitled to charge the ratepayers of Dublin for an especially lavish picnic. The Lord Chief Justice paid ironic tribute to Hemphill's eloquence and persuasiveness, but added drily that he had entirely failed to persuade the Court that the members of the Corporation would "starve" if they were unable to make the ratepayers foot the bill for fine claret, whiskey and cigars, to say nothing of the broken wineglasses (although there were only four of them, which the judge fairly noted seemed quite moderate in the circumstances).

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