The Honourable Oliver Deneys Schreiner MC |
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Judge of the South African Appellate Division | |
In office 1 January 1945 – 1960 |
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Appointed by | Jan Smuts |
Judge of the Transvaal Provincial Division | |
In office 1 August 1937 – 31 December 1944 |
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Appointed by | J. B. M. Hertzog |
Personal details | |
Born | 29 December 1890 Cape Town |
Died | 27 July 1980 | (aged 89)
Nationality | South African |
Spouse(s) | Edna Lambert Fincham |
Oliver Deneys Schreiner, MC (29 December 1890 - 27 July 1980), was a judge of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa, the highest level appeals court in the country at the time.
Schreiner was born in Cape Town in 1890. He was the son of William Philip Schreiner, the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony during the Boer War, and his wife, Frances, a sister of President F. W. Reitz. The author Olive Schreiner was his aunt.
He went to Rondebosch Boys' High School and then the South African College School (SACS). He then went to the South African College (now the University of Cape Town), where he was the admired president of the Debating Union. An excellent student, he "could have had the Rhodes Scholarship for the asking", but understood, in the light of Rhodes's involvement in the Jameson Raid and subsequent fallout with William Schreiner, that "no Schreiner took such a gift from such a man". Instead, Schreiner went up to Cambridge University to read law at Trinity College. A string of academic prizes was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. Schreiner enlisted in the British Armed Forces, was wounded in the right arm at the Battle of the Somme, and received the Military Cross.