Horace Avory

Sir Horace Edmund Avory (31 August 1851 – 13 June 1935) was an English High Court judge.

He was the son of Henry Avory, clerk of the Central Criminal Court. He was educated at King's College London, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he was captain of boats and took the degree of LL.B. in 1874. He became a barrister of the Inner Temple in 1875 and married Maria Louisa Castle in 1877. He was elected Bencher in 1908 and was knighted and made a judge, later to become a senior judge, of the King's Bench division in 1910. He received a Hon.D.LL. degree in 1911 and was made Treasurer in 1929. He died at Rye, East Sussex.

Avory was one of the most noted English criminal lawyers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was involved in many sensational trials and became a household word as the most dreaded "hanging judge" of his age. He was called "thin lipped, cold, utterly unemotional, silent, and humorless, and relentless towards lying witnesses and brutal criminals" and "impervious to bluff and merciless to perjury". In private life, however, he showed a different face.

Famous cases in which he appeared include the trials of Adoph Beck, Sir Roger Casement, Oscar Wilde (as prosecuting counsel), Jean-Pierre Vaquier,Patrick Mahon and Clarence Hatry.

His prosecution of Adolph Beck contributed to one of the most significant miscarriages of justice in English legal history. Beck was wrongly identified by ten women as a swindler and was sentenced to seven years. When, some years later, Beck's innocence was unquestionably established it was noted that Avory made no effort to apologise in any way for the distress he had helped cause.

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