Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Romer, Robert
ROMER, Sir ROBERT (1840–1918), judge, was born at Kilburn 23 December 1840, the second son of Frank Romer, musical composer, by his wife, Mary Lydia, daughter of Benjamin Cudworth. He was educated at private schools, and in 1859 matriculated at Cambridge as a scholar of Trinity Hall. In 1863 he was senior wrangler, and Smith's prizeman jointly with the second wrangler. Trinity Hall had never before produced a senior wrangler, and Romer's success is commemorated in the large picture (by Farren, a local artist), ‘Degree Day, 1863,’ which hangs in the combination room of the college. On leaving Cambridge his first appointment was that of private secretary to Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild. In 1864 he married his first cousin, Betty, daughter of Mark Lemon [q.v.], one of the founders, and first editor, of Punch. From 1865 to 1866 he was professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork. In 1867 he was elected a fellow of Trinity Hall; on 11 June of the same year he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, and took chambers at 4 New Square, whence some years later he moved to 16 Old Buildings. In the law list of 1868 his connexion with the home circuit and Sussex and Brighton sessions was announced; but he soon developed a practice in the chancery courts, and the reference to sessions was not repeated in later issues. His chancery practice increased rapidly and for several years he was one of the busiest juniors. In 1881 he was made a Q.C., and practised at first for a brief time before the master of the Rolls, Sir George Jessel; but when under the Judicature Act (1881) that judge became a member of the Court of Appeal, Romer went to the court of Sir Joseph William Chitty. He was a very successful advocate, quick, learned, and lucid, with something of a genial audacity. Among chancery advocates he was especially noted for his skill in the art (at that time still a novelty in their traditions) of dealing with witnesses in the box. In 1884 he was made a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, and in the same year stood unsuccessfully for parliament at Brighton as a liberal; but he was never a keen politician.
On 17 November 1890, upon the elevation of Sir Edward E. Kay to the Court of Appeal, Romer was appointed a judge of the chancery division, and knighted. Lord Halsbury's selection of judges was not always applauded, but no one had any doubt about the propriety of this choice. Apart from his professional distinction, the new judge enjoyed a popularity of which his being almost universally known as ‘Bob’ Romer was significant. His career on the bench added to the distinction, and did not decrease the popularity. In 1899, on the death of Chitty, he was promoted to the Court of Appeal and made a privy councillor. Sitting in the Court of Appeal was perhaps less congenial to him than his work as a judge of first instance, and in the long vacation of 1906 he retired from the bench. In the first part of that year it was possible for the Court of Appeal to consist of three senior wranglers (Romer, Stirling, and Fletcher Moulton), as a few years before it could consist of three ‘rowing blues’ (Lord Esher, Chitty, and A. L. Smith).
Romer's acute and active mind was always interested in other things besides the law. In 1899 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, primarily in virtue of his eminence as a mathematician. In 1900 he was appointed chairman of the royal commission to inquire into the management of military hospitals in the South African War, and he received the G.C.B. in recognition of his services. After his retirement in 1906 he lived at Great Hormead, Hertfordshire, and enjoyed the pleasures of country life, of which, and of shooting in particular, he had always been fond. Lady Romer died in 1916, and Romer himself died at Bath on 19 March 1918. Five sons, of whom the second, Sir Mark Lemon Romer, has followed in his father's footsteps as a judge of the chancery division, and one daughter, survived them. A portrait of Romer, by Lowes Dickinson, hangs in the combination room at Trinity Hall.
[The Times, 21 March 1918; Law Journal, 23 March 1918; Law Lists; H. E. Malden, History of Trinity Hall, 1902.]