Herbert du Parcq, Baron du Parcq

Herbert du Parcq, Baron du Parcq PC, KC (5 August 1880 – 27 April 1949) was a British judge.

Herbert du Parcq was born in Saint Helier, Jersey in 1880, son of Clement Pixley du Parcq and Sophia Thoreau. He was educated at Victoria College, Jersey and Exeter College, Oxford (BA Literae Humaniores) (2nd class)) and Jesus College, Oxford (BCL, Senior Scholar). He was president of the Oxford Union in 1902. He was called to the Bar by Middle Temple in 1906 and admitted to the Jersey Bar in the same year. [cite web| title=The Rt. Hon. Lord du Parcq (in In Memoriam)|last=C. J. C. |work=Transactions of the Grotius Society, Vol. 35, Problems of Public and Private International Law, Transactions for the Year 1949 |year=1949 | pages=xv-xvi |url=http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1479-1234%281949%2935%3Cxv%3ATRHLDP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q]

In 1911 he married Lucy Renouf, from Saint Helier, and an obituary indicates that at the time of his death in a London nursing home on April 27, 1949 there were two surviving daughters and one surviving son, whose names have not been ascertained.

He became a specialist in commercial litigation in London, took silk as a Q.C. in 1926 and was appointed Recorder for Portsmouth in 1928 and Recorder for Bristol in 1929. A mutiny in Dartmoor Prison on 24 January 1932 led to the setting up of a commission of enquiry under Herbert du Parcq. His report was considered satisfactory and he was rewarded with an appointment to the King's Bench Division as a judge.

Invested to the Privy Council in 1938, du Parcq was Lord Justice of Appeal from 1938 to 1946. On 5 February 1946, he was appointed Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and was created a life peer with the title Baron du Parcq, of Grouville in the Island of Jersey.

In 1946 he became chairman of a Royal Commission into justices of the peace. He was a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, and was a Honorary Fellow of Exeter College and Jesus College.

According to Edwin Clarence Guillet’s _The Guillet-Thoreau Genealogy_ (Toronto: E.C. Guillet, 1971. 247 pages, illustrated, genealogical tables, 29cm. A bound typescript available in the British Library under call number X.802/2433), to the best of the information available to this author, the closest relative to Henry David Thoreau at the date of publication of his typescript was a 2d cousin once removed who had died in 1949, Sir Herbert Du Parcq, Lord Du Parcq of Grouville, a member of the House of Lords and the Lord Justice of Appeal for England, or perhaps this lord’s mother Sophia Thoreau Du Parcq in the remote possibility that at that point she still survived. It has not been ascertained whether this man ever had been contacted in regard to his family relationship with the American author Henry David Thoreau.

References

*Obituary, The Times, 28 April 1949