Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Bowen, Charles Synge Christopher
BOWEN, The Right Hon. Sir Charles Synge Christopher, one of the Lords Justices in the Court of Appeal, is a son of the Rev. Christopher Bowen, of Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight, formerly rector of St. Thomas's, Winchester, by Catharine Emily, daughter of Sir Richard Steele, Bart. He was born at Wollaston, Gloucestershire, in 1835, and educated at Rugby and at Balliol College, Oxford. He carried off three of the great University prizes, including the Hertford and Ireland scholarships, and, together with several distinguished contemporaries, he was placed, in 1858, in the first class in classical honours. Called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1861, he joined the Western circuit. He was senior member of the "Truck Commission" in 1870, was appointed Junior Standing Counsel to the Treasury, in 1872, and Recorder of Penzance in the same year. Though he never "took silk," he acquired a leading position in his profession, and in June, 1879, he was appointed a judge of the Queen's Bench division of the High Court of Justice on Mr. Justice Mellor's retirement from the bench. He was knighted by the Queen at Windsor, June 26. In May, 1882, he was appointed a Lord Justice in the Court of Appeal in the room of the late Sir John Holker, and sworn of the Privy Council. He is the author of an historical essay entitled "Delphi," and of a pamphlet "On the Alabama question." He married, in 1862, Emily Frances, daughter of the late Mr. James Medows Rendel, F.R.S.