Joseph Fry (1795–1879) and Mary Ann Swaine were his parents. He was a Quaker from a prominent Bristol family which founded and owned the chocolate firm J. S. Fry & Sons. His grandfather was Joseph Storrs Fry (1767–1835) and his brothers included a second Joseph Storrs Fry (1826–1913) who ran the firm and Lewis Fry (1832–1921) who was a politician.
He was called to the bar in 1854, took silk in 1869 and became a judge in Chancery in 1877, receiving the customary knighthood.[2][3] He was raised to the Court of Appeal in 1883, and was sworn of the Privy Council.[4][5] He retired in 1892. Retirement from the court did not mean retirement from legal work. He sat on some cases in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. In 1897 he accepted an offer to preside over the royal commission on the Irish Land Acts. He also acted as an arbitrator in the Welsh coal strike (1898), the Grimsby fishery dispute (1901) and between the London and North Western Railway Company and its employees (1906, 1907).
He was also involved in international law. In 1902 he acted as one of five arbitrators at The Hague in the Pious Fund of the Californias dispute between the United States and Mexico, the first dispute between states arbitrated by the Permanent Court of Arbitration. In 1904 he was the British legal assessor on the commission to investigate the Dogger Bank incident where the Russian navy accidentally attacked a British herring fleet in the North Sea. He was involved in the second Hague Conference (1907). In 1908/1909 he was an arbitrator between France and Germany over a case where France had seized deserters (including some German citizens) from German diplomatic protection.[8]
He wrote two books on bryophytes, British Mosses (1892)[9] and, with his daughter Agnes, The Liverworts: British and Foreign (1911).[10]
"Map showing where opium is grown in China" reproduced from the British government White Paper on China in 1908
Suppression of opium
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In his preface to the 1884 report to the Houses of Parliament titled The Indo-Chinese opium trade considered in relation to its history, morality, and expediency, and its influence on Christian missions, Fry wrote:
"We English, by the policy we have pursued, are morally responsible for every acre of land in China which is withdrawn from the cultivation of grain and devoted to that of the poppy; so that the fact of the growth of the drug [opium] in China ought only to increase our sense of responsibility".[11]
Judgments
Judgments of Fry include:
Foakes v Beer [1884] UKHL 1, [1881-85] All ER Rep 106, (1884) 9 App Cas 605; 54 LJQB 130; 51 LT 833; 33 WR 233 - (Fry sitting in the Court of Appeal) - a leading case from the House of Lords on the legal concept of consideration.
British South Africa Co v Companhia de Moçambique [1893] AC 602 (Fry sitting in the Court of Appeal) - the House of Lords overturned Fry's Court of Appeal decision and by so doing established the Mozambique rule, a common law rule in private international law that renders actions relating to title in foreign land, the right to possession of foreign land, and trespass to foreign land non-justiciable in common law jurisdictions.[13]
Family
Edward Fry married in 1859 Mariabella Hodgkin (1833–1930), daughter of John Hodgkin, granddaughter of Luke Howard, and sister of the historian, Thomas Hodgkin: and they were the parents of seven daughters, one dying young, and two sons.[14][15] They lived in Highgate at 5 The Grove, a house later owned by the singer George Michael.[16]
Agnes Fry (1869–1957) – co-writer with her father on several scientific treatises and later wrote a biography of him; and her twin sister Isabel Fry (1869-1958), educator
^Spencer Hill, J. (1884). The Indo-Chinese opium trade considered in relation to its history, morality, and expediency, and its influence on Christian missions. London: Henry Frowde. Prefatory note by Lord Justice Fry.
^The Law Reports, Queens Bench Division (1887). "In the Arbitration between Secretary of State for Home Department and Fletcher". XVIII: 340–346. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
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