[John Fletcher; Baron]. English judge, born at Madeley, Salop, on the 1st of November 1844. He was educated at New Kingswood school, Bath, and St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he had a brilliant career, becoming in 1868 senior wrangler and first Smith’s prizeman. Until 1873 he was a fellow of Christ’s College, but in that year he came to London, and in 1874 was called to the bar. He became a Q.C. in 1885, and the same year entered Parliament as Liberal member for the Clapham division. He lost his seat in 1886, but from 1894 to 1895 sat for South Hackney and from 1898 to 1906 for the Launceston division of Cornwall. Fletcher Moulton earned a great reputation not only as a sound and skilful lawyer, but also as a mathematician and experimental chemist of a high order. He was retained as counsel in many important cases, e.g., questions of patent law, in which such special knowledge was necessary, and he was one of the first lawyers to perceive the enormous importance which chemistry was likely to assume in relation to various aspects of the law. He was raised to the bench of the Court of Appeal in 1906, being knighted and sworn of the Privy Council, and in 1912 was made a lord of appeal and a life peer, being also appointed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Lord Moulton’s career as a judge was unfortunately marred by a painful family litigation against him. In 1875 he had married Mrs. Thomson, of Edinburgh, who already had a family of two sons and two daughters. She died in 1888, and in 1901 Lord Moulton married again. In 1902 his stepdaughters, who had continued to live with him, took proceedings against him with reference to the manner in which the income to which they were entitled under their mother’s will had been expended in connection with the household expenses. The court eventually gave judgment in their favour, after a good deal of scandal had been made over the affair. Lord Moulton became a member of many important legal and scientific committees, being appointed first chairman of the Medical Research Committee under the National Insurance Act (1912). On the outbreak of the World War in 1914 he became chairman of the Committees on Chemical Products and on High Explosives, and the same year was made director-general of explosive supplies in the Ministry of Munitions. In 1915 he was made a K.C.B. and in 1917 a G.B.E. It would be difficult to exaggerate the value of his work for the Government as a scientific adviser during the war, and in stimulating the industrial developments for the production of explosives, a chemical question involving, inter alia, the reorganization of the British dyeing industry. In this connection he acted as chairman of the British Dyestuffs Corporation when it was created in 1919; and his labours were actively continued after the war ended. He died suddenly in London on the 9th of March 1921, leaving one son by his first marriage, Hugh Lawrence.
