Patrick Spens, 1st Baron Spens

Patrick Spens, 1st Baron Spens KBE, PC, KC (9 August 1885 – 15 November 1973), was a British lawyer, judge and Conservative politician. He served as Chief Justice of India from 1943 to 1947.

Spens was the eldest of the six children of Nathaniel Spens, of Surrey, and Emily Jessie Connal. Both his parents were of Scottish descent. Spens was educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford, and was called to the Bar, Inner Temple, in 1910. He served in the First World War as an adjutant in the 5th battalion of the Queen's Royal Regiment. After the war Spens started practising as a lawyer, and became a King's Counsel in 1925. He unsuccessfully contested St Pancras South West in a 1929 by-election, but was elected for Ashford in 1933. In 1943 Spens was unexpectedly appointed Chief Justice of India. He retained this post until 1947, and then served from 1947 to 1948 as chairman of the tribunal set up to arbitrate between India and Pakistan over the partition of British India. Spens returned to Britain in 1949, and the following year he was elected to Parliament for Kensington South. He stood down from Parliament before the 1959 general election.

Spens was knighted in 1943, made a KBE in 1948 and admitted to the Privy Council in 1953. After his retirement from the House of Commons in 1959 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Spens, of Blairsanquhar in the County of Fife.

Lord Spens married firstly Hilda Mary, daughter of Wentworth Grenville Bowyer, in 1913. They had two sons. After his first wife’s death in 1962 he married secondly Kathleen Annie Fedden, daughter of Roger Dodds. Lord Spens died in November 1973, aged 88. He was succeeded in the barony by his eldest and only surviving son, William George Michael Spens.

References

*Blake, Lord, Nicholls, C. S (editors). "The Dictionary of National Biography, 1971-1980". Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
*Kidd, Charles, Williamson, David (editors). "Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage" (1990 edition). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990.