Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Falkiner, Frederick Richard
FALKINER, Sir FREDERICK RICHARD (1831–1908), recorder of Dublin, was third son of Richard Falkiner (1778–1833) of Mount Falcon, county Tipperary, who held a commission in the 4th royal Irish dragoons, by his wife Tempe Litton (1796–1888). Travers Hartley (b. 1829), an elder brother, was a well-known engineer; the fine railway line from Zurich to Chur was his design, and he supervised a large portion of the works in connection with the Forth Bridge. The family came to Ireland from Leeds in the time of the Protector, and was long engaged in the woollen manufacture.
Frederick, born at Mount Falcon on 19 Jan. 1831, was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated B.A. in 1852. He was called to the Irish bar in the Michaelmas term of that year, and joined the north-east circuit. A man of great industry and natural eloquence, he soon won a foremost place in the ranks of the juniors and held briefs in many important cases. He took silk in 1867, and in 1875 he was appointed law adviser at Dublin Castle, an office since abolished. In the following year he was appointed recorder of Dublin, on the death of Sir Frederick Shaw [q. v.]. He threw himself with energy into the work of the court, and as the 'poor man's judge' he earned a reputation for humanity. During his early years as recorder he was called upon to decide many intricate points in the licensing laws. He took a keen interest in acts of parliament bearing on compensation to workmen for injuries received in the course of their employment, and when Mr. Chamberlain was engaged in drafting his bill on the subject in 1897 he adopted several of Falkiner's suggestions. In 1880 he was elected a bencher of the King's Inns, and in August 1890 he was knighted. He retired from his office on 22 Jan. 1905, when he was made a privy councillor.
Falkiner was one of the most prominent members of the general synod of the Church of Ireland, and in the debates of that body, especially on financial questions, he frequently intervened with much effect. He was chancellor to the bishops of Tuam, Clogher, Kilmore, and Derry and Raphoe. He was also chairman of the board of King's Hospital, better known as the Blue Coat School. Of this school he published in 1906 a history, which is in effect a history of Dublin from the Restoration to the Victorian era. Falkiner pursued literary interests; he wrote on Swift's portraits (Swift's Prose Works, 1908, vol. xii.), and a collection of his 'Literary Miscellanies' was published posthumously in 1909. He died at Funchal, Madeira, on 22 March 1908.
He married twice: (1) in 1861 Adelaide Matilda (d. 1877), third daughter of Thomas Sadleir of Ballinderry Park, county Tipperary; and (2) Robina Hall (d. 1895), third daughter of N. B. M'Intire of Cloverhill, county Dublin. By his first wife he had issue three sons, including Caesar Litton Falkiner [q. v. Suppl. II], and four daughters.
A portrait by Walter Osborne is in the National Gallery, Dublin.
[A biography by Falkiner's daughter May, prefixed to his Literary Miscellanies; The Falkiners of Mount Falcon, by F. B. Falkiner, 1894; Burke's Landed Gentry of Ireland, 1904.]