John Wall

Who was John Wall?

Sir John Anthony Wall CBE was a British lawyer and the first visually impaired judge at the High Court of Justice of the 20th century.

Wall was born in East Finchley. He suffered from glaucoma from an early age, which caused him to go completely blind by the age of eight. After his blindness took hold, he moved from a mainstream school to Chorleywood School for the Blind. He moved to Worcester College for the Blind in 1940. Despite only being 14, two years younger than usual, he took his School Certificate in 1944, achieving the highest score in his class. After further strong academic performance in his Higher School Certificate, he was accepted into Balliol College, Oxford where he read jurisprudence and graduated in 1951. He also played chess at school and university.

His blindness presented him with difficulties in finding a job; he made over 400 job applications after graduating and was invited to 53 interviews before he was offered a job as an articled clerk at Wilkins, Rowan and Newman, a small law firm of solicitors in Chelsea. He qualified as a solicitor in 1954, and in 1956 he began working as a legal adviser for the National Association of Local Government Officers.