John Charles Day
Encyclopedia
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
judges in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
to be appointed after the English Reformation
English Reformation
The English Reformation was the series of events in 16th-century England by which the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church....
, the first being William Shee
William Shee
Sir William Shee QS was an Anglo-Irish politician, lawyer and judge, the first Roman Catholic judge to sit in England and Wales since the Reformation.-Early life and legal career:...
. He was also known as a collector of paintings, including several works by James McNeill Whistler
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger...
.
Born at the Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
, son of Captain John Day and his wife Emilie (née Hartsinck), Sir John Day completed his schooling at Downside
Downside School
Downside School is a co-educational Catholic independent school for children aged 11 to 18, located in Stratton-on-the-Fosse, between Norton Radstock and Shepton Mallet in Somerset, south west England. It is attached to Downside Abbey...
, and, as the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were at that time inaccessible to Catholics, obtained his BA from the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
in November 1845.
He was admitted as a student in the Middle Temple
Middle Temple
The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers; the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn...
in 1845, was called to the Bar, and became a judge in June 1882. He was well known for sentencing criminals to lashes. In his latter years, he would sometimes listen to cases with his eyes closed, listening intently, and opening an eye suddenly if something significant were said. Colleagues jocularly referred to this as "the peep of Day".
He was one of the judges who sat on the Parnell Commission
Parnell Commission
The Parnell Commission was a judicial inquiry in the late 1880s into allegations of crimes by Irish parliamentarian Charles Stewart Parnell which resulted in his vindication.-Background:...
. At the time it was said that it was on his insistence that early proof was tendered of the authenticity of the letters attributed to Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell was an Irish landowner, nationalist political leader, land reform agitator, and the founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party...
, which forced Richard Pigott into the witness box and led to the collapse of that part of the case.
He was appointed to the Privy council
Privy Council of the United Kingdom
Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, usually known simply as the Privy Council, is a formal body of advisers to the Sovereign in the United Kingdom...
in 1902.
There are various portraits of Sir John Day. One of the most notable is a very large painting that is on display in the Royal Courts of Justice in London of several judges including Sir John Day. The National Portrait Gallery houses various cartoons and a photographic portrait of him.
The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
ran an obituary notice on 18 June 1908, and carried an article on the sale of his art collection on 14 May 1909.