\"Baron Widgery\" John Widgery Hand Signed FDC Dated 1965 For Sale

Up for sale "Baron Widgery" John Widgery Hand Signed FDC Dated 1965. 

ES-5791E

John

Passmore Widgery, Baron Widgery, Kt, OBE, TD, PC (24 July 1911 – 26 July 1981) was an English judge who

served as Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 1971 to

1980. He is principally noted for presiding over the Widgery Tribunal on the

events of Bloody Sunday.

Widgery came from a North Devon family

which had been living in South Molton for

many generations. An ancestor had been a gaoler and his mother served as

a magistrate. He attended Queen's College, Taunton,

where he became head prefect. He was admitted as a solicitor in

1933 after serving as an articled

clerk, but instead of going into practice, he joined Gibson and

Welldon, a well-known firm of law tutors. He was an effective lecturer in the

years leading up to World War II while he was also commissioned into

the Royal Engineers (Territorial Army) in 1938, having joined as a sapper.

As a searchlight officer, in 1940 he transferred to the Royal

Artillery. Widgery participated in the Normandy

landings. By the end of the war he had an OBE,[2] the Croix de Guerre (France), and the Order of Leopold (Belgium), and had reached the rank of brigadier.

Widgery was an active freemason. After demobilization Widgery changed to another

branch of the legal profession as he was called to 1946. He gathered a reputation for being a fast talker,

and eventually came to specialise in disputes over rating and town

planning, where his methodical approach and self-control were useful

attributes. In 1958 he was made a Queen's

Counsel, the first such award given to a post-war barrister.

Widgery became a High Court judge in 1961, receiving the customary knighthood.[5] As a judge he did not draw attention to himself

and his judgments tended not to include any comments which were pithy,

memorable or quotable. However, his calmness produced judgments which were

generally regarded as fair and humane. One example cited in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography was his

justification for limiting damages for economic loss in Weller v Foot

and Mouth Disease Research Institute, a judgment handed down in 1966. Widgery

headed several inquiries during his term. He received promotion to the Court of Appeal in 1968, but had barely got used to his

new position when Lord Parker of Waddington (who had been Lord Chief Justice since 1958) announced his retirement.

There was no obvious successor and Widgery was the most junior of the possible

appointees. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, chose Widgery largely on the basis of his

administrative abilities. On 20 April 1971 he was created a life peer taking

the title Baron Widgery, of South Molton in

the County of

Devon.