Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Moulton, John Fletcher
MOULTON, JOHN FLETCHER, Baron Moulton (1844–1921), lord of appeal in ordinary, was born 18 November 1844 at Madeley, Shropshire, the third son of the Rev. James Egan Moulton, a Wesleyan minister, as his father and grandfather had been before him, and for a time head master of New Kingswood School, Bath, by his wife, Catherine, daughter of William Fiddian, brass-founder, of Birmingham. Moulton was named after a former vicar of Madeley, John William Fletcher [q.v.], the intimate friend of John Wesley. He was a younger brother of William Fiddian Moulton [q.v.], and uncle of James Hope Moulton [q.v.]. He received his early education from his father. At the age of eleven he was sent to Kingswood School and was at once placed in the head master's class. When thirteen and a half he was head of the school; at the age of sixteen he took the highest marks in England at the first of the Oxford and Cambridge local examinations. On leaving Kingswood School he acted for a short time as an assistant-master at schools at Biggleswade and Northampton. In 1861 he matriculated at London University, winning a studentship of £30. He took his B.A. degree in mathematics (1865), being alone in the first class both at the intermediate and the final examination. Meanwhile he had been elected to a scholarship at St. John's College, Cambridge. His fame as a mathematician soon spread, and when, during his first year at Cambridge, he entered for the London University scholarship no other candidate appeared. Coached by the famous Dr. Edward John Routh [q.v.], Moulton was first Smith's prizeman and senior wrangler in 1868, with the highest total of marks ever gained; (Sir) George Howard Darwin [q.v.] was second wrangler. The same year he won the gold medal for mathematics at London University, and was elected a fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, few of the St. John's fellowships being at that time open to laymen. Moulton worked both as college tutor and private tutor, and was a regular attendant at the debates of the Union Society, of which he was president in 1868, and thereafter treasurer till he left Cambridge in 1873. The Union records show that he was an advocate of votes for women, reform of the university system of education, and Irish conciliation.
In 1873 Moulton came to London to read for the bar, and the following year he was ‘called’ by the Middle Temple. He read in chambers with William George Harrison [q.v.], then a busy common law junior, and soon had work of his own of a general kind. The passing of the Patents, Designs, and Trade Marks Act (1883), which considerably increased the number of patent actions, gave him a chance which he was ready to take, and in 1885 he applied for, and received, a silk gown. Shortly before, his electrical researches had won him a fellowship of the Royal Society. For the next twenty years Moulton was engaged, as a leader, in all patent cases of any importance. In this class of work he was unrivalled. His mind worked with great rapidity; scientific facts and problems which others had to master laboriously, presented no difficulties to him; and he had the gift of easy and lucid speech. Apart from patent work his practice was large and varied. He often appeared in parliamentary committee rooms when bills relating to electrical undertakings were being promoted; and he was a favourite advocate both in compensation cases and in those concerning trade-marks and trade-names. In the lengthy litigation over the right of the Kodak Company to register the word ‘Solio’ as a trade-mark, he induced the House of Lords to accept the view of his clients, despite the adverse judgments of the two courts below; he appeared in the multitudinous cases which centred round the Dunlop and Welsbach patents; and he was counsel in the arbitration which settled the price to be paid for the undertakings of the London water companies when the Metropolitan Water Board was created. There were not many barristers of his time who made a larger income.
In November 1885 Moulton was elected to the House of Commons, in the liberal interest, as a member for the Clapham division of Battersea, and began a parliamentary career which received many checks. At the general election of 1886 he lost his seat; he failed to get back to parliament at the general election of 1892; and it was not till 1894 that he was elected member for South Hackney in succession to Lord Russell of Killowen, who, as Sir Charles Russell, had held the seat for eight years. This seat he lost at the general election of 1895. He returned to the House of Commons as member for the Launceston division of Cornwall in August 1898, and continued to sit for that constituency till the general election of 1906. In the House of Commons he played an active part. His support was useful to Sir William Harcourt in 1894 when the new death duties were under discussion; he spoke effectively against the Chinese Labour ordinances after the South African War; in 1904 he showed, in a speech which convinced waverers, that the supporters of a ‘pure beer’ Bill were neglecting valuable scientific discoveries, and that beer drinkers had nothing to fear from what was represented as adulteration; and in 1905 he carried through the House a measure which became law as the Trade Marks Act. Between 1885 and 1905 Moulton's party was only in office for about three years, and he had few chances of promotion; but in 1906, on the return of the liberals to power, he was made a lord justice of appeal in succession to Sir James Charles Mathew [q.v.], knighted, and sworn of the Privy Council.
During his six years of service in the Court of Appeal Moulton was an outstanding figure. His power of assimilation was as great as ever; and he dealt with commercial cases, appeals under the Workmen's Compensation Act, and actions of libel, as if he had been accustomed to them all his life. Notable cases in which his dissenting judgment was upheld by the House of Lords are Scott v. Scott (1913, the right to order a trial in camera), and A.-G. v. West Riding of Yorkshire County Council (1907, the obligation of local education authorities to pay for religious instruction in non-provided schools); and in Cuenod v. Leslie (1909) he showed characteristic independence on the question whether a husband is still liable for the torts of his wife. From time to time he formed a court with two colleagues—Lord Justices James Stirling [q.v.] and Robert Romer [q.v.]—each of whom had also been a senior wrangler. In 1912 he succeeded Lord Robson [q.v.] as a lord of appeal in ordinary, and became a life peer with the title of Lord Moulton, of Bank in the county of Southampton.
Shortly after the outbreak of the European War in 1914, Lord Moulton was called from his work in the House of Lords by the invitation of the government to preside over a committee whose duties were to arrange for the manufacture of high explosives and propellents for the British forces. Moulton organized a service which, as the Explosives Supply Department, became a branch of the War Office, and was turning out at the date of the Armistice (November 1918) 1,000 tons of high explosives a day. At first he had to cope with great difficulties. The available factories were few; and the sources of supply of raw materials were limited. Lyddite had been replaced by trinitrotoluene, every three tons of which required two tons of toluene; 600 tons of coal produced one ton of toluene. Moulton economized by mixing ammonium nitrate with trinitrotoluene, thus producing a new compound explosive known as amatol. Nitric acid, sulphuric acid, and glycerine were needed in large quantities at a time when shipping facilities were disorganized; but he managed to secure them. He had control of the gas works, coke ovens, and fat and oil supplies of the whole country. When the retaliatory use of poison gas was decided upon Moulton undertook its manufacture. His department delivered during the War a total of 612,697 tons of high explosive and 450,487 tons of propellents.
For these extraordinary services Moulton received the K.C.B. (1915) and G.B.E. (1917). At Christmas 1920 he underwent a slight nasal operation. On 8 March 1921 he sat in the House of Lords and seemed to have recovered his usual good health. In the early hours of 9 March he died in his sleep. His death, caused by a clot in an artery, had been instantaneous. Addressing the lords of appeal two days later, Lord Birkenhead, in an eloquent speech, spoke of the intellectual force and dynamic impulse of personality which had enabled a judge to play a supreme part in the European War. Lord Moulton had strong instincts of hospitality and was a delightful companion.
Moulton married twice: first, in 1875 Clara (died 1888), widow of Robert William Thomson, of Edinburgh and Stonehaven; and secondly, in 1901 Mary (died 1909), daughter of Major Henry Davis, of Naples. By his first wife he left a son (the Hon. Hugh Fletcher Moulton), and by his second wife, a daughter.
A crayon drawing of Moulton by Trevor Haddon, R.B.A., is in the possession of the family; and a cartoon portrait by ‘Spy’ appeared in Vanity Fair.
[The Times, 10 March 1921; Law Journal, 12 March 1921; Hugh Fletcher Moulton, The Life of Lord Moulton, 1922; personal knowledge.]