Sir Charles Henry Sargant (20 April 1856 – 23 July 1942) was a British barrister judge who served as Lord Justice of Appeal from 1923 to 1928.
Biography
Sargant was born in London, the son of barrister and conveyancer Henry Sargant, and of Catherine Emma, daughter of Samuel Beale. Among his siblings were the painter Mary Sargant Florence and the botanist Ethel Sargant.
He was a precocious child, and was said to have taught himself to read at the age of three. He was educated at Rugby School and New College, Oxford, where he took first-class honours in classical moderations (1876), second-class honours mathematical moderations (1877), and first-class honours in literae humaniores (1879). He was elected an honorary fellow of his college in 1919.
After spending a year in a solicitors' firm, and reading as a pupil in the chambers of conveyancer Edward Parker Wolstenholme, he was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1882. After practicing as a conveyancer, he turned to court work. He was a fine draftsman, and two of his pupils, Sir Frederick Francis Liddell and Sir William Graham-Harrison, became First Parliamentary Counsel. He was appointed junior counsel to the Treasury in equity matters in 1908 and was elected a bencher of Lincoln's Inn the same year. He was said to not be very ambitious or industrious, and as a consequence he never took silk.
