John Charles Bigham, 1st Viscount Mersey, PC (3 August 1840 – 3 September 1929) was a British jurist and politician.

[1] In October 1897, Bigham was named a judge to the Queen's Bench,[3] continuing his work in business law, and disqualifying him being an MP.

[4] He was president of the Railway and Canal Commission, worked in the bankruptcy courts and reviewed courts-martial sentences that were handed down during the Second Boer War.

In 1998, the historian Daniel Butler described Mersey as "autocratic, impatient and not a little testy" but noted the "surprising objectivity" of the inquiry's findings.

[5] However, Peter Padfield later concluded that there had been "crazy deductions, distortions, prejudice, and occasional bone-headed obstinacy of witnesses and the court".

His biographer Hugh Mooney wrote that such suspicions are wholly conjectural, but "the conclusion of the inquiry (which blamed Germany for the tragedy without reservation) was without doubt politically convenient".

[1] In his later years, Mersey was beset by deafness, but continued to work actively and returned to the bench in his eighties when the divorce courts had a heavy backlog.