Fenton Atkinson

Sir Fenton Atkinson (6 January 1906 – 28 March 1980) was a British judge. He is perhaps best known as the judge who oversaw the trial of the Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, at Chester Assizes in 1966.

Atkinson was the son of High Court judge and Conservative Party politician Sir Cyril Atkinson. He was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. He married Margaret Mary Roy in 1929. They had a son and two daughters.

Atkinson called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1928. Like his father, he practised on the Northern Circuit.

He served in the Royal Norfolk Regiment in the Second World War, receiving an emergency commission, and achieving the substantive rank of Major and acting Brigadier by September 1943. He served as an Assistant Adjutant-General in India. He also served with the British Military Government in occupied Germany after the War, and participated in the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals.

He was appointed as a Queen's Counsel in 1953, and became a judge in Salford Hundred Court of Record the same year. He became a deputy chairman of the Hertfordshire Quarter Sessions in 1958. He was appointed as a High Court judge in 1960, serving in the Queen's Bench Division, and received the customary knighthood. He was a member of the Beeching Commission in 1966–67 which recommended reforms to the court system of Assizes and Quarter Sessions, leading to the Crown Courts system from 1971.

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