FIELD, WILLIAM VENTRIS FIELD, BARON (1813 19o7), English judge, was born at Fielden, Bedfordshire, on Aug. 21, 1813. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 185o, after having practised for some time as a special pleader. He had for some time been the leader of the Midland circuit, when in Feb. 1875, on the retirement of Mr. Justice Keating, he was raised to the bench as a justice of the queen's bench. When the rules of the Supreme Court 1883 came into force in the autumn of that year, the lord chancellor selected him to sit continuously at Judges' Chambers, in order that a consistent practice under the new rules might as far as possible be established. This he did for nearly a year, and his name will always be associated with the settling of the details of the new procedure, which finally did away with the former elaborate system of "special pleading." In 1890 he retired from the bench, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Field of Bakeham, becoming at the same time a member of the privy council. He died at Bognor on Jan. 23, 1907.