[1] As barrister in 1911 he had successfully defended the anarchists Yourka Dubof and Jacob Peters who were allegedly involved in the Sidney Street siege (also known as the Houndsditch murders) which so embarrassed Winston Churchill.
Peters later returned to Russia to play a leading part in the Bolshevik revolution; he became deputy director of the Cheka and worked with Lenin and Dzerzhinsky.
Sir James also, albeit unsuccessfully, acted in appeal against the obscenity criminal verdict which included a censorship order against The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall.
His obituary in The Law Journal states:'His ill health in the last years and his early death were the belated toll exacted by his service in during the war in which he fought with the same placid courage which distinguished him in peace.
At his posthumous Gateshead by-election on 8 June, Herbert Evans held the seat for Labour, but died in office on 7 October, the day when Parliament was dissolved for the 1931 general election.