Charles Edward Pollock

He was educated at St. Paul's School from 1833 to 1841, and, dispensing with a university course, served a long and varied apprenticeship to the law as private secretary and (from 1846) marshal to his father, and also as pupil to James Shaw Willes.

[1] As a leader, he had for some years a large and lucrative practice, especially in mercantile cases, and on the retirement of Baron Channell in 1873 he was raised to the exchequer bench (10 January), invested with the coif (13 January), and knighted (5 February) The consolidation of the courts effected by the Judicature Acts gave him in 1875 the status of justice of the high court, but did not alter his official designation.

A similar historic distinction, that of representing the ancient and doomed order of serjeants-at-law, he shared with Lords Esher and Penzance, and Sir Nathaniel Lindley.

Pollock tried, in April 1876, the unprecedented case of the Queen v. Keyn, arising out of the sinking of the British vessel Strathclyde by the German steamship Franconia.

The collision occurred within three miles of the English coast, and Keyn, the master of the Franconia, to whose culpable negligence-it was imputed, was indicted for manslaughter and found guilty.