INTRODUCTION

WHEN JAPAN ‘OPENED up’ to the West following the Ansei treaties in 1858, the British, along with the other Western powers, demanded extra-territorial rights. British extra-territoriality in Japan was run by government employees and consisted of consular courts operating along lines similar to courts in Britain.

In 1865, the British government established a new court structure that, with a modification in 1878, operated until 1899 when extra-territoriality was abolished. Legally trained judges were introduced and the consular courts were placed under judicial control. In The British Courts and Extra-territoriality in Japan, 1859–1899, I examined the operation of British extra-territoriality in Japan; here I consider three of the early judges who played a key part in the operation of this system: Sir Edmund Hornby, Charles Goodwin and Sir Richard Rennie.

SIR EDMUND GRIMANI HORNBY (1825–1896)

When he was forty years old Hornby was plucked from the Supreme Consular Court at Istanbul to become ‘midwife’ to the new regime in China and Japan. Alone of the Chief Justices based in Shanghai, he had substantial immediate oversight of the consular court system in Japan and visited Japan several times on circuit.

He was born in York in 1825, the second son of Thomas Hornby, a solicitor, and Francesca Grimani, but spent most of his early life in London in St Swithin's Lane, close to the Bank of England. Proud of his aristocratic lineage, he could trace his patrilineal descent from one of Henry I's knights and his matrilineal descent from Venetian Doges. He was brought up by tutors at home before going to the London University School and then, aged fifteen, he went with his brother to study near Göttingen for two years. From there, he went to Paris where he studied for nine months so that he was fluent in both German and French.

On returning to London, his father sent him to Lisbon where he entered the diplomatic service as a junior clerk to his uncle, Henry Southern, then minister to Portugal. Southern was a protégé of Sir George Villiers, later Earl of Clarendon. In Lisbon, Hornby acquired knowledge of both Portuguese and Spanish. From Lisbon, he moved for a period to the embassy in Madrid.