Francis Jeune
Francis Jeune
Francis Jeune, Baron St Helier 1843-1905 Lawyer and judge
Francis Henry Jeune, 1st Baron St Helier GCB, PC, QC, known as Sir Francis Jeune, was the son of The Right Reverend Francois Jeune, Bishop of Peterborough, and Margaret Symons, daughter of Henry Symons. Educated at Harrow School and Balliol College, Oxford, he was President of the Oxford Union in 1864. In 1868, he was called to the Bar of the Inner Temple.
Judicial career
In 1888 he became a Queen's Counsel. In 1891 he was appointed as a Judge in the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court and knighted. In June 1892 he became President of the Court in succession to Sir Charles Parker Butt and joined the Privy Council. In December of that year he was also appointed Judge Advocate General by Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, a post he held until 1895. He continued as President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division until January 1905 when, beset by ill health, he resigned. In 1897, he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Bath and in 1902, a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. In February 1905 he was granted an annuity of £3,500 and raised to the peerage as Baron St Helier of St Helier in the Island of Jersey and of Arlington Manor in the County of Berkshire.
Family
On 17 August 1881, Lord St Helier married Susan Elizabeth Mary Stanley, the recently widowed daughter of Keith William Stewart-Mackenzie of Brahan Castle, Scotland, and Hannah Charlotte Hope-Vere. In 1882 their only child, a son, Christian Francis Seaforth Jeune, was born. He became a Lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards, but died of enteric fever on 19 August 1904, in Poona, India. Lord St Helier died the next year, on 9 April 1905, aged 62. As he had no surviving male issue, the barony died with him.
Lady St Helier
Lady St Helier was descended, through her father`s family, Mackenzie, from the Earls of Seaforth, whose title gave her son his second Christian name. She was a great promoter of charities, an indefatigable London hostess, a writer, and London County Council Alderman, 1910-1927. She was made in 1920 a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and in 1925 a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). When the LCC built a large estate in Sutton, near Croydon, Surrey, to re-house people, between 1928 and 1936, who were living in decayed inner-London areas, the new estate was named, in her honour, St Helier. She died in January 1931 and was buried in Berkshire, beside her husband.
Family tree
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A letter written by Francis Jeune -
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