Hon Mr Justice Fenton Atkinson EIIR Black Leather Dispatch Box
C 1960
An Elizabeth II Black Leather Covered Dispatch Box, the top stamped in gold with the Royal Insignia EIIR in the centre and HON. MR JUSTICE FENTON ATKINSON* and below ROYAL COMMISSION ON ASSIZES AND QUARTER SESSIONS. The brass carrying handle is at the back of the box, and the four lever lock in the front has two keys. The interior is lined with black leather cloth, and has has raised sides with is a pair of locating studs on the left rim.
*Sir Fenton Atkinson (6 January 1906 – 28 March 1980) was an English barrister and judge of the Salford Hundred Court of Record, then the High Court and finally of the Court of Appeal. He is perhaps best known as the judge who oversaw the trial of the Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, at Chester Assizes in 1966.
He sat on the Court of Appeal panels that heard the appeal of James Hanratty in 1962 and the appeals of the Great Train Robbers in 1964.
Atkinson called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1928. Like his father, he practised on the Northern Circuit. He served in the Royal Norfolk Regiment in the Second World War, receiving an emergency commission, and achieving the substantive rank of major and acting brigadier by September 1943. He served as an Assistant Adjutant-General in India. He also served with the British Military Government in occupied Germany after the war, and participated in the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals.
He was appointed as a Queen's Counsel in 1953, and became a judge in Salford Hundred Court of Record the same year. He became a deputy chairman of the Hertfordshire Quarter Sessions in 1958. He was appointed as a High Court judge in 1960, serving in the Queen's Bench Division, and received the customary knighthood. He was a member of the Beeching Commission in 1966–67 which recommended reforms to the court system of Assizes and Quarter Sessions, leading to the Crown Courts system from 1971.
Atkinson was promoted to the Court of Appeal in 1968, serving as a Lord Justice of Appeal until he resigned on medical grounds in 1971. He sat on the Court of Appeal panels that heard the appeal of James Hanratty in 1962, the appeals of the Great Train Robbers in 1964, and the appeal in 1971 in R v Knuller, Knuller v DPP, a case of conspiracy to corrupt public morals in relation to gay contact advertisements published in IT magazine.
Width:
16 inches / 41 centimetres *
Height:
5 inches / 12.5 centimetres
Depth:
11.5 inches / 29 centimetres
