John George Gibson PC, QC (13 February 1846 – 28 June 1923), was an Irish lawyer, judge and Conservative politician.
Maurice Healy in his memoir The Old Munster Circuit praises Gibson's charm, eloquence, dignity and sense of fairness, although he rated him below his brother Lord Ashbourne as a lawyer.
[3] Arguably Healy underestimated Gibson as a judge: his judgment in Fox v. Higgins [4] remains the definitive analysis of the curious "triangular" employment situation in Ireland involving an individual teacher, the school board and the Minister for Education, and it is still regularly quoted.
[5] In 1871, Gibson married his cousin, Ann Sophia Matilda Hare, daughter of Reverend John Hare of Deer Park, County Tipperary and Mary Pennefather, and had eight children, of whom only four - John, William, Anne, and Charlotte - survived infancy.
Maurice Healy in The Old Munster Circuit records the touching story of how her father, despite his desperate concern about Anne's serious illness, tried to hold the Cork assizes in the normal way: but the members of the Irish Bar, out of compassion, found excuses to adjourn all the cases in the legal calendar.