BOWEN, CHARLES SYNGE CHRISTOPHER (BARON BOWEN, OF COLldOOD) (1835-1894), English judge, was born on Jan. 1, 1835, at Woolaston, Glos., the son of a clergyman. From Rugby he went to Oxford and became a fellow of Balliol in 1858. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1861. Soon after he had begun to make his mark he was briefed against the claimant in the famous "Tichborne Case," both in the civil and criminal trials. Bowen's services to his leader, Sir John Coleridge, in the former helped to procure for him the appoint ment of junior counsel to the treasury when Sir John was attor ney-general. In 1879 his acceptance of a judgeship in the queen's bench division gave him leisure. His subtle intellect and gentle irony were wasted upon common juries; but when, in 1882, he was raised to the court of appeal he was more at home. In August 1893, he was made a lord of appeal. But his health had broken down ; he never sat to hear appeals, and he gave but one vote as a peer; his last public service was to pre side over the commission which sat in October 1893 to inquire into the Featherstone riots. He died on April 1o, 1894.
Lord Bowen was regarded with affection by all who knew him. His judicial reputation rests upon the decisions delivered by him in the court of appeal, which are remarkable for their lucid interpretation of legal principles as applied to the facts and business of life; the advice given to the House of Lords in Angus v. Dalton (6 App. Cas. 740), and his judgments in Abrath v. North Eastern Railway (I 1 Q.B.D. 440); Thomas v. Quarter maine (18 Q.B.D. 685); Vagliano v. Bank of England (23 Q.B.D. 243) (in which he prepared the majority judgment afterwards reversed in the House of Lords) ; and the Mogul Steamship Company v. M'Gregor (23 Q.B.D. 598). He never forsook the cult of the classics; his translations of Virgil's Eclogues, and of the Aeneid, books i.-vi., are admirable, and his pamphlet, The Alabama Claim and Arbitration considered from a Legal Point of View, showed that even in a legal discourse he was still a lover of style.
See Sir Henry Stewart Cunningham, Lord Bowen (1897).