The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-12-31 00:00:00

DEATH OF LORD JUSTICE LUSH.

We regret to announce the death of Lord Justice
Lush, which took place on Tuesday at his residence in
the Avenue-road, Regent's-park, London. His lord-
ship, who was in the 75th year of his age, was
appointed a judge in the Queen's Bench on the death
of Mr. Justice Crompton, in November, 1865, and
succeeded the late Lord Justice Thesiger in the Court
of Appeal in the autumn of last year, He is the third
Lord Justice who has diEd within eighteen months.
The Times, in a leader, makes the following observa-
tions on his lordship's judicial career :
"By the death of Lord. Justice Lush we have lost a
sterling lawyer of the old type. All to whom his face
was familiar in the Courts will miss his large store of
legal acumen tempered with much common sense.
To those who knew not his features, his name and his
words were equally familiar. The public will regret
a Judge whose judgments were masculine, and whose
sense was on a par with his learning in the law.
Lord Justice Lush had lived his full span. He
had survived many changes of law and of
lawyers. During the sixteen years of his career
as a Judge our system of judicature has been revolu-
tionized; and it is his merit that he mounted on the
waves of change instead of allowing them to buffet
him. He fought his way up, as so many of our Judges
have done, from the lowest rung of the ladder. Called
to the Bar at the age of thirty-three, ten years later
than most barristers, he, made up for the lateness of
his start by ability and industry. At fifty he attained
the position of Queen's Counsel, at fifty-eight he was
a Judge. If he could have cherished a regret, it must
have been that his upward rise was not so continuous
as his first successes seemed to guarantee. He sat
on the Bench fifteen years before he became a
member of the Court of Appeal. In the autumn of
last year he succeeded Lord Justice The,iger,
man.of forty-two, who three years before had been
promoted to a Lord Justiceship over the head of
Mr. Justice Lush, and of many others. The
old man, however, outlived and filled the place of
the young man. As a Judge and a Lord Justice
Sir Robert Lush has occupied a considerable
place in the eyes of the profession and the public.
It his last step of elevation had come soonPr, ho
might have loomed still larger, though his work would
not have necessarily been more useful or better done.
And if the ten years lost to him at the beginning of
his career had been added on to the end, Lord Justice
Lush might have attained the experience and earned
the dignified retirement of Sir George Bramwell. As
it is, he has achieved eminence more than the ordinary,
and far more than his early opportunities could pro-
mise.

. "Lord Justice Lush was not only a good lawyer,
but he was a man of the world, with the sympathies and
sense which a nrui of the world has acquired. He was a
settler of disputes between man and man in the widest
sense of the word. He was always ready with almost
paternal advice to suitors. If he could persuade them
to compromise the case out of Court, he was well
pleased. To discover what was best for both parties
was his guiding motive; and when the heat of litiga-
tion had cooled down, all were willing to acknowledge
his services as mediator. Then his good-nature was
great, and young counsel had often to be grateful for
a kind word in their perplexities." . . . .