Frederick Falkiner

Sir Frederick Richard Falkiner PC, QC (1831 – 23 March 1908) was an Irish lawyer, judge and author. Life Falkiner was the third son of Richard Falkiner, of Mount Falcon, County Tipperary, Ireland, and was educated at Trinity College Dublin, from which he graduated in 1852, the same year that he was called to the Irish Bar. He became a Queen's Counsel in 1867 and was appointed as Law Adviser to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1875. The following year he was appointed Recorder of Dublin, a judicial position he held for almost three decades. He became a bencher of King's Inns in 1880 and was knighted in 1896. Falkiner held briefs in many important cases. In 1876 he was appointed recorder of Dublin, on the death of Sir Frederick Shaw, and earned a reputation for humanity. During his early years as recorder, he was called upon to decide intricate points in the licensing laws; Maurice Healy remarked that he was reluctant to add to Dublin's licensed premises. He took an interest in the subject of workmen's compensation, and when Joseph Chamberlain was engaged in drafting the Workmen's Compensation Act 1897 he adopted several of Falkiner's suggestions. He retired from his office on 22 Jan 1905, when he was made a privy councillor. Falkiner was one of the most prominent members of the general synod of the Church of Ireland, and in the debates of that body, especially on financial questions, he frequently intervened with much effect. He was chancellor to the bishops of Tuam, Clogher, Kilmore, Derry and Raphoe. He was also chairman of the board of King's Hospital, better known as the Blue Coat School. In 1906, he published a history of this school, which is in effect a history of Dublin from the Restoration to the Victorian era. Falkiner pursued literary interests; he wrote on Jonathan Swift's portraits (Swift's Prose Works, 1908, vol. xii.), and a collection of his 'Literary Miscellanies' was published posthumously in 1909.