John Walter Huddleston

Sir John Walter Huddleston (8 September 1815 – 5 December 1890) was an Irish judge, formerly a criminal lawyer who had established an eminent reputation in various causes célèbres.

As a Baron of the Exchequer of Pleas, he was styled Baron Huddleston, in writing, Huddleston B. Soon after his appointment, the Exchequer was absorbed into the High Court of Justice and the style abolished. He sometimes referred to himself as "The last of the Barons."

Today, the case he presided over that remains famous is Whistler v. Ruskin, where his wife and that of Ruskin's counsel sat beside him on the bench.

Personal life Huddleston was the eldest son of Thomas, a Merchant Navy officer and Alethea née Hichens. He was born and educated in Dublin, attending Trinity College Dublin, but he did not graduate.

She never recovered from the loss of her husband in 1890, and everywhere she went the ashes of the Baron, who was cremated at Woking, accompanied her. The small bronze urn containing them always rested on a table beside her bed. He became a QC in 1857 and a bencher of Gray's Inn, being Treasurer in 1859 and 1868. alongside appointment as a serjeant-at-law and the receiving of a knighthood. He was also made a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, which position was almost immediately transferred to the Exchequer and then to the Exchequer Division of the High Court. Huddleston's reputation as a judge never matched his standing as an advocate.

In 1884 Huddleston was judge at first instance in the leading maritime case of R v. Dudley and Stephens involving murder, cannibalism and the defence of necessity. He was further central to engineering the judicially approved guilty verdict against the instincts of the jury.