3-021-241 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Mr. Justice Hannen, the new judge, 1868. Engraving from a photograph by John Watkins. 'The newly-appointed Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench, Mr. Justice Hannen, who fills the place rendered vacant by the death of Mr. Justice Shee, is in about the forty-seventh year of his age, having been born (it is said) in 1821. He was called to the Bar by the Hon. Society of the Middle Temple, Jan. 14, 1848, and went the Home Circuit. His great knowledge of special pleadings, and of the law generally, and the soundness of his judgment, soon brought him good and extensive practice. He was continually employed in very complicated and important cases, and was, in the great Shrewsbury case, in the House of Lords, one of the counsel for the noble and successful claimant, the present Earl of Shrewsbury. Mr. Hannen never became a Queen's Counsel; but many other solid and influential Judges have put off the stuff gown at once for the ermine. Mr. Hannen, indeed, according to invariable custom, became a Serjeant-at-Law just before he was sworn in as a Judge'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.