Sir Walter Boyd, 1st Baronet

Sir Walter Boyd, 1st Baronet (28 January 1833 -25 June 1918) was an Irish judge, who was also a member of the Privy Council of Ireland. After serving for many years as the Irish Bankruptcy judge, he was transferred to the King's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice in Ireland. His much younger friend Maurice Healy described him with great respect and affection in his memoir The Old Munster Circuit.

Boyd's eldest son Sir Walter Herbert Boyd, 2nd Baronet, is still remembered in the sailing world as the designer of the Howth 17th Footer yacht, while his second son Dr. Cecil Boyd was a noted rugby player.

He was born at what is now Walworth Road in Portobello, Dublin, the fourth son of Walter Boyd and his second wife Jane Macrory, daughter of Robert MacRory of Castledawson, County Londonderry. He was educated at the University of Dublin where he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1855 and Doctor of Laws in 1864. He entered Lincoln's Inn in 1854 and was called to the Irish Bar in 1856. He took silk in 1877 and became Queen's Advocate for Ireland the following year. In politics he was a staunch Unionist: his wife's family, the Andersons, played a crucial role in maintaining British rule in Ireland in the late nineteenth century.

He did not enjoy much of a reputation as a lawyer, but following in the great tradition of John Philpot Curran and Daniel O'Connell, he was noted for his absolute fearlessness in Court. Maurice Healy recalls a well-known story that Mr Justice O'Brien angrily asked him: where was Dr Boyd's respect for the Court? Boyd replied that the Court was receiving the exact degree of respect it deserved.

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