LORD MERSEY - NEW VISCOUNT

His Majesty has been pleased to confer the dignity of a viscounty of the United Kingdom upon:---

THE RIGHT HON. LORD MERSEY

Lord Mersey's reputation as a Judge and as an authority on international and maritime law is great and his work on various important committees is well known. Born in 1840, he was called to the Bar in 1870. He represented the Exchange Division of Liverpool in Parliament from 1895 to 1897, and during that period he was a member of the South African Committee of the House of Commons. In 1897 he was raised to the Bench, and five years later he was appointed a member of the Royal Commission for Revision of Martial Law Sentences in South Africa. He was afterwards President of the Railway and Canal Commission and Bankruptcy Judge. In 1909 he was made President of the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division. As a Wreck Commissioner he conducted the inquiries into the loss of many notable vessels, among them the Titanic and the Empress of Ireland. More recently he presided at the inquiries into the destruction of the Falaba and the Lusitania. Lord Mersey was raised to the peerage in 1910. He married in 1871 a daughter of the late Mr. John Rogers, of Liverpool, and has two sons, the elder of whom is Captain the Hon. C: C. Bigham.