William Senior (1862–1937), Legal Historian

Abstract

Upon receiving from Clare College, Cambridge, a William Senior scholarship to continue my studies in legal history, I enquired about the man whose generosity was being extended to me. No one knew anything about him. Therefore, I collected the information for this short piece as much out of curiosity as piety. Having done so, I discovered a legal historian and scholar of moderate proportions who does not deserve such complete neglect. Had he been a teacher or a politician, my efforts might have been rewarded by the discovery of more personal information about the man himself. As it is, very little beyond his vital statistics is known, and so we must concentrate upon his scholarly remains. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to rescue from oblivion the scholarship of William Senior for the benefit of modern legal historians and to further publicize the existence of this fund of money which he bequeathed for the encouragement of the study of legal history. William Senior was born in 1862 in Wakefield, Yorkshire, the son of Thomas Senior, a solicitor who practiced in Wakefield and Bradford.' He was admitted to Clare College, Cambridge, in 1879 and took his B.A. from the university three years later. In 1886 he was admitted to the Law Society as a solicitor. From 1888 to 1890 he practiced law alone in his native Wakefield, and for the next following five years he pursued his profession in partnership with his father and their next-door neighbor, Percival Barratt.2 In 1891 Senior published his first work: Tutor and Pupils: talks about twelve law maxims.3 However, he never restricted his interests to the field of law, and during the year 1893, at least, he was a member of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society.4 In the