Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Hopwood, Charles Henry

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HOPWOOD, CHARLES HENRY (1829–1904), recorder of Liverpool, born at 47 Chancery Lane, London, on 20 July 1829, was fifth son, in a family of eight sons and four daughters, of John Stephen Spindler Hopwood (1795–1868), solicitor, of Chancery Lane, by his wife Mary Ann (1799–1843), daughter of John Toole of Dublin. After education successively at a private school, at King's College School, and at King's College, London, he became a student at the Middle Temple on 2 Nov. 1850, and was called to the bar on 6 June 1853. He joined the northern circuit and obtained a good practice. He took silk in 1874, and was elected a bencher of his Inn in 1876, becoming 'reader' in 1885, and treasurer in 1895. He edited two series of reports of 'Registration Cases'; the first series (1863–7), in which he collaborated with F. A. Philbrick, appeared in 1868, and the second series (1868–72), in which he collaborated with F. J. Coltman, appeared in 1872-9 (2 vols.).

In 1874, and again in 1880, Hopwood was elected member of parliament for Stockport in the liberal interest. He was defeated in the same constituency at the general election in 1885. In 1892 he was elected for the Middleton division of Lancashire and sat till 1895. During Gladstone's short ministry of 1886 Hopwood was appointed recorder of Liverpool.

Throughout his public life Hopwood supported energetically and with singular tenacity and consistency the principle of personal liberty. He was a loyal supporter of radical measures, but at the time of his death he was justly described as 'the last of those liberals who were all for freedom—freedom from being made good or better as well as freedom from worse oppression; freedom from state control; freedom from the tyranny of the multitude, as well as from fussy, meddlesome legislation.' In parliament he opposed unrelentingly the Contagious Diseases Acts and the Vaccination Acts, denying that it was justifiable to curtail the personal liberty of such persons as chose to expose themselves and others to risks of infection. As recorder he discouraged prosecutions for such offences as keeping disorderly houses. Towards the end of his life he spoke with indignation of an Act forbidding—on the ground of public safety—the carrying of pistols without a licence. He was also a constant advocate in the House of Commons of trade unions, and of the reform of the laws then regulating the relation of master and servant. While at the bar he constantly defended trades unionists who were prosecuted for offences against the Conspiracy Acts, and sought to protect the funds of the union from legal distraint. As recorder of Liverpool he made himself the protagonist of the current reaction from greater to less severity in awarding punishment for crime. In his own court he carried the remission of severity to a pitch which his friends could not justify. He claimed that by his substitution of sentences of about three months' imprisonment for sentences of about seven years' penal servitude he greatly diminished crime within his jurisdiction; but in quoting statistics in support of this contention he made no allowance for the facts that the magistrates, disapproving of his intemperance in reform, committed to the assizes many persons who would naturally have been sent for trial to his sessions, and themselves dealt summarily with very many more. He proposed legislation in favour of short sentences, and in 1897 he founded the Romilly Society to reform the criminal law and prison administration. He sought to establish a court of appeal in criminal cases. He was a warm advocate of an extension of the suffrage to all adults, including women.

Hopwood was a man of handsome features and good presence, wore a full black beard, and preserved an almost juvenile complexion to the end of his life. He had the power of attracting the warm personal regard of many of his friends who considered his exaggerated insistence upon his own opinions to be mischievous. He died unmarried at Northwick Lodge, St. John's Wood Road, N.W., on 14 Oct. 1904, and his remains, after cremation at Golder's Green, were buried in a family grave at Kensal Green. A portrait in oils by Jamyn Brooks belongs to Hopwood's younger brother, Canon Hopwood, Louth, Lincolnshire.

Hopwood edited:

1. 'Observations on the Constitution of the Middle Temple,' 1896.
2. 'A Calendar of the Middle Temple Records,' 1903.
3. 'Middle Temple Records,' 1904.

[The Times, 17 and 19 Oct. 1904; Men of the Time, 1898; Foster's Men at the Bar; personal knowledge.]