John Gordon

Who was John Gordon?

John Gordon PC was an Irish lawyer and politician, who served as Attorney-General for Ireland and a Judge of the High Court.

Gordon was the son of Samuel Gordon, of Shankhill, County Down. He was educated at Queen's College Galway, a constituent college of the Queen's University of Ireland, graduating with a B.A. degree in 1873, and LL.B. in 1876. He served as auditor of the college's Literary and Debating Society for the 1873-1874 session. He was awarded an L.L.D. on the dissolution of the Queen's University in 1882. He was called to the Irish Bar at the King's Inns in 1877.

Gordon was elected a Member of Parliament for the South Londonderry constituency in 1900, as a representative of the Liberal Unionist interest, and served in the House of Commons until 1916. In June 1915, he was appointed Attorney-General for Ireland, an office he held until April 1916, when he was appointed a judge of the King's Bench division of the High Court of Justice in Ireland. He also became a member of the Irish Privy Council in 1915.

He married Dorothy Clay in 1887. He died in Dublin on 26 September 1922, having been taken ill in a tram on his journey home from the Four Courts. Maurice Healy, who vividly described many of the Irish judges of his youth in " The Old Munster Circuit" confessed that Gordon had made almost no impression on him except a refusal to wear bright colours.