He married in 1830 Seraphina Hibernia, daughter of William Pennell, British consul-general for Brazil, and left two sons, the Rev. William Joseph Bramley-Moore, formerly a clergyman of the church of England, and author of several theological works, and John Arthur Bramley-Moore (d. 10 July 1899). His additional name of Bramley was assumed in 1841.
[Picton's Memorials of Liverpool; Shimmin's Pen-and-ink Sketch of Liverpool Town Councillors, 1866; Manchester Guardian, 23 Nov. 1886; Liverpool newspapers, 23 and 26 Nov. 1886. Bramley-Moore's will is given in the Liverpool Post, 27 Dec. 1886.]
BRAMWELL, GEORGE WILLIAM WILSHERE, Baron Bramwell (1808–1892), judge, was the eldest son of George Bramwell (1773–1858), a partner in the banking firm of Dorrien, Magens, Dorrien, & Mello, since amalgamated with Glyn, Mills, Currie, & Co. His mother is said to have been a woman of much character, and to have attained the age of ninety-six. Bramwell was born on 12 June 1808 in Finch Lane, Cornhill. At twelve years old he was sent to the Palace school, Enfield, kept by Dr. George May, where he was the school-fellow of (Sir) William Fry Channell [q. v.], afterwards Baron Channell, his contemporary on the home circuit and his colleague in the court of exchequer. On leaving school he became a clerk in his father's bank. In 1830, having married his first wife, he determined to devote himself to the law, and became the pupil of Fitzroy Kelly [q. v.] After practising for some years as a special pleader he was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in May 1838. He joined the home circuit, and speedily acquired, both on circuit and at the Guildhall, a substantial junior practice and a good reputation as a lawyer of solid learning. In 1850 he was appointed a member of the common law procedure commission, the other members being Chief-justice Jervis, Baron Martin, Sir A. Cockburn, and Mr. (afterwards Mr. Justice) Willes. The result of their labours was the Common Law Procedure Act, 1852, In 1851 Bramwell was made a Q.C., and in 1853 he served on the commission whose inquiries resulted in the Companies Act, 1862. Bramwell thus took an active part both in the modern development of English law represented by the joint effects of the Common Law Procedure Acts and the Judicature Acts, and in the invention of 'limited liability'—two revolutions of about equal importance in the history of law and of commerce.
In 1856, upon the resignation of Baron Parke, Bramwell was appointed to succeed him in the court of exchequer, and was thereupon knighted. He sat in this court until it ceased to exist in 1876, and perhaps refined scholarship was the only requisite of an ideal judge to which he had no pretension. An admirable lawyer, with an immense knowledge and understanding of case-law, he was also one of the strongest judges that ever sat on the bench. In the first year of his judgeship it fell to his lot, on circuit, to try a man named Dove for murder. Dove was an example of the people who are both mad and wicked. He hated his wife with a hatred that could only be called insane, and after brooding over and cherishing his hatred for years he murdered her with every circumstance of cruelty and premeditation. Bramwell stated the law to the jury with so much force, accuracy, and lucidity that Dove was found guilty and hanged. For the next twenty years the 'mad doctors,' who either could not or would not understand that by English law some mad persons who commit crimes are responsible, and others are not, had no more formidable antagonist than Bramwell. His favourite question, when a medical witness called to support a defence of insanity had deposed that in his opinion the prisoner 'could not help' acting as he did, was 'Do you think he would have acted as he did if he had seen a policeman watching him and ready to take him into custody.?' Bramwell gave both expression and effect to his opinions with the most absolute fearlessness, and never shrank from the logical conclusions of his views. When he sat in the House of Lords after his retirement, he held with equal clearness and vigour to his opinion that a corporation was legally incapable of malice, and therefore could not be sued as such for malicious prosecution, however great the hardship thereby inflicted upon the plaintiff. He distinguished clearly between the provinces of the legislature and the judge, and never sought to evade the duty of putting in force some part of the law which, by common consent, was obviously in need of alteration.
During the twenty years that he sat in the exchequer division he made a great reputation, and became extremely popular with the members of the bar who practised before him, owing to his kindness, good humour, and businesslike grasp of affairs. He used to relate with satisfaction how, when a ruffianly prisoner in the north of England had been convicted before him of an atrocious assault, he had begun to address to him the commentary upon the offence with which it is usual to preface a serious criminal sentence.
