Robert Cox (Scottish lawyer)

Robert Cox WS (1810–1872) was a Scottish lawyer, known as a writer of several works on the question of the Christian Sabbath, and a phrenologist.

Besides attending the classes of law and of general science at the University of Edinburgh, he also studied anatomy under Robert Knox.

[1] The attention of Cox was first directed to the Sabbath question by the actions of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway Company, in withdrawing a limited passenger service in connection with their Sunday trains.

Becoming a shareholder, he attended two half-yearly meetings of the company in 1850, at each of which he moved that to the Sunday trains which were being regularly run passenger carriages should be attached.

[1] Cox took an active part in the Right of Way Association, and was one of the parties to the action against George Murray, 6th Duke of Atholl, by which Glen Tilt was reopened to the public.

After his return to Edinburgh he was induced by Messrs. Black to undertake the compilation of the index to the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

In 1841 he also resumed the editorship of the Phrenological Journal; it ceased in 1847, on the death of Andrew Combe, of whom he contributed a memoir to the last number.