JAMES

See also:

• JAMES WHITESIDE (18o4--1876)

WHITESIDE (18o4--1876)  , Irish judge, son of William Whiteside, a clergyman of the Church of Ireland, was born on the lath of August 1804, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, being called to the Irish bar in 183o . He very rapidly acquired a large practice, and after taking silk in 1842 he gained a reputation for forensic oratory surpassing that of all his con-temporaries, and rivalling that of his most famous predecessors of the 18th century . He defended Daniel O'Connell in the state trial of 1843, and William Smith O'Brien in 1848; and his greatest triumph was in the Yelverton case in 1861 . He was elected member for Enniskillen in 1851, and in 1859 became member for Dublin University . In parliament he was no less successful as a speaker than at the bar, and in 1852 was appointed solicitor-general for Ireland in the first administration of the earl of Derby, becoming attorney-general in 1858, and again in 1866 . In the same year he was appointed chief justice of the Queen's Bench; and he died on the 25th of November 1876 . Whiteside was a man of handsome presence, attractive personality and cultivated tastes . In 1848, after a visit to Italy, he published Italy in the Nineteenth Century; and in 187o he collected and republished some papers contributed many years before to periodicals, under the title Early Sketches of Eminent Persons . In 1833 Whiteside married Rosetta, daughter of William Napier, and sister of Sir Joseph Napier (1804-1882), lord chancellor of Ireland . See J . R . O'Flanagan, The Irish Bar (London, 1879) .