Edmund Grimani Hornby

Sir Edmund Hornby (29 May 1825 – 17 November 1896) was a leading Jewish-Italian British judge, with family interests in diamond-rich Antwerp. He was the founder and Chief Judge of both the British Supreme Consular Court at Constantinople and British Supreme Court for China and Japan.

(Hornby had a nephew, Edmund Hornby Grimani, who also had a career in China with the Chinese Maritime Customs. The two should not be confused).

Hornby was born in 1825, in St. Swithin, London on 29 May 1925, to Thomas and Francesca Hornby. His father was from Yorkshire and his mother was the daughter of William Grimani of the Grimani family of Venice.

He was called to the bar of Middle Temple in 1848 and practiced briefly in London. In 1853, he was appointed a commissioner of Mixed British and American Commission settling outstanding individual claims between Britain and the USA. Following this, he was appointed as a commissioner of the Turkish Loan lent by Britain to Turkey during the Crimean War with Russia.

While in Turkey, Hornby sat as a consular assessor in the British consular courts. Hornby was asked by the Foreign Office to write a report on the exercise of extraterritorial judicial powers in Turkey by consuls who had no legal training or background. Hornby recommended setting up a court with dedicated staff to handle judicial work. This was accepted and on 27 August 1857, at the age of 32, Hornby was appointed Judge of the British Supreme Consular Court at Constantinople. He was knighted five years later in 1862 at the early age of 37.

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