IVOR BOWEN - "THE TIMES" DEATH NOTICE AND OBITUARY

JAN 3 1934 - DEATH NOTICE

BOWEN, -On Jan. 2, 1934, passed away peacefully in his sleep, in London, JUDGE IVOR BOWEN, K.C. and Bencher of Gray's Inn, late Commanding 18^th Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers (2^nd London Welsh). No flowers. No mourning, by request.

JAN 8 1934 - OBITUARY

HIS HONOUR IVOR BOWEN

"T.A.J." writes:-

To future generations of his countrymen his Honour Ivor Bowen will be known by "the Statutes of Wales," a carefully prepared compilation in which he sets forth all the Acts of Parliament, or parts thereof, relating to the Principality, beginning with the Magna Charta, ch. 56, 57, 58 (17 John, 1215), and ending with 2 Edward VII., c. 42, s. 17 (1902).

The book, which was published in 1908, took him many years to compile. The text of section 20 of the statute which deals with the status of the Welsh language in His Majesty's Courts of Justice in Wales had not been previously published. It served to dispel the erroneous idea that the ancient speech of the very people whose life and liberty and property were on trial was barred in the Courts of Justice of their own land. Bowen was also the author of a remarkably interesting biography of Archbishop Williams, who held the Great Seal under James 1. It is a useful corrective to the picturesque fictions with which Lord Campbell treated the Welshman in his "Lives of the Chancellors." Bowen has left behind him in manuscript another book dealing with the history of "the King's Court of Great Sessions," (which were abolished after 300 years by 11 Geo. 1V. and 1 William 1V., c. 70. in 1830, when the Principality became absorbed in the English circuit system). The Welsh University Press, which has published many useful works, might do worse than publish the work, and also another edition of the "Statutes of Wales," which is now out of print. With a keen eye for oddity of character, Bowen had an amusing store of reminiscences of the old Welsh circuit, and his many friends at the Reform Club and on the bench at Gray's Inn will mourn his loss.