Charles Swinfen Eady, 1st Baron Swinfen

Lord Swinfen.

Charles Swinfen Eady, 1st Baron Swinfen PC, QC (31 July 1851-15 November 1919), was a British lawyer and judge.

Eady was the son of George John Eady of Chertsey, Surrey, and his wife Laura Maria Smith, daughter of Richard Smith. He was educated privately and at the University of London, and was admitted a solicitor in 1874. In 1879 Eady was called to the Bar, Inner Temple. He built a successful legal practice and became a Queen's Counsel in 1893. In 1901 Eady was knighted and appointed a Judge of the High Court of Justice (Chancery Division), and office he held until 1913, and was then a Lord Justice of Appeal from 1913 to 1918. The latter year he succeeded Lord Cozens-Hardy as Master of the Rolls. However, Eady's health soon began to decline and he resigned in the autumn of 1919. He had been admitted to the Privy Council in 1913 and on 1 November 1919 was raised to the peerage as Baron Swinfen, of Chertsey in the County of Surrey.

Justice Swinfen Eady gave a key judgement in 1903 which protected Kodak's trademarks from infingement from competitors, which the British Journal of Photography described as the most important for photography to have been heard since Talbot v. Laroche in 1854.

Lord Swinfen married Blanche Maude Lee, daughter of Sydney Williams Lee, in 1894. They had one son and two daughters. He died on 15 November 1919, only two weeks after his elevation to the peerage, and was succeeded in the barony by his only son Charles.

Legal offices
Preceded by Sir Herbert Cozens-Hardy	Master of the Rolls 1918-1919	Succeeded by Lord Sterndale
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by New Creation	Baron Swinfen	Succeeded by Charles Swinfen Eady