Charles Henry Bellenden Ker

Charles Henry Bellenden Ker (c.1785–1871) was an English barrister and legal reformer.

The son of John Bellenden Ker, he was born about 1785. As a young man, he was a patron of William Blake, though unwilling when it came to payment in 1810. Blake took some legal steps, and George Cumberland became involved.

Ker was called to the bar by the Society of Lincoln's Inn on 28 June 1814, and obtained a large practice as a conveyancer. Active in promoting parliamentary reform from 1830 to 1832, he was a member of the boundary commission, and contested Norwich unsuccessfully in the Whig interest.

Ker was a member of the Public Records Commission, and in 1833 he was appointed one of the royal commissioners to report on the expediency of digesting the criminal law and consolidating the other branches of the statute law. Some Bills for the amendment of the criminal law were based on the reports of the commission.

In 1845, with Hayes and Christie, Ker drew up for Lord-chancellor Lyndhurst a short Bill; it passed into an Act (8 & 9 Vict c 106) amending the law of real property. In 1853 Lord Cranworth appointed Ker head of a board nominated to consider the consolidation of the statute law, and when that board was replaced in 1854 by a Royal Commission, Ker became the leading working member. The action of the board and commission led to the revised edition of the statutes, the successive Statute Law Revision Acts, the issue of the chronological tables of the statute law, and to the Criminal Law Acts of 1861.

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