F E Smith - Early Life, Education and Career As An Advocate

Early Life, Education and Career As An Advocate

Smith was born in Birkenhead in Cheshire. He was educated at a dame school in the town, Sandringham School at Southport, then (after failing entry exams to Harrow) at Birkenhead School from 1887 to 1889. After four terms at the University College of Liverpool, he went up to Wadham College, Oxford, in 1891, where he was a contemporary of the politician John Simon and the athlete C.B. Fry.

He became President of the Oxford Union, where a bust of him now stands. He obtained only a Second in Mods before switching to Law, in which he obtained a First. However, to his disappointment, he only obtained a Second in his Bachelor of Civil Law degree. After winning a Fellowship of Merton College in 1896, and also a lecturership at Oriel College, he taught law at Oxford until 1899, when he was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn, where the Birkenhead Award bears his name. The F.E. Smith Memorial Mooting Prizes commemorate him at Merton.

Smith rapidly acquired a reputation as a formidable advocate, first in Liverpool and then in London. He married Margaret Eleanor Furneaux, daughter of classical scholar Henry Furneaux, in April 1901 and they had three children, Eleanor, Frederick and Pamela. In 1907, Smith was famously asked to give an opinion on a proposed defamation action by the Lever Brothers against newspapers owned by Lord Northcliffe concerning allegations of a conspiracy to raise the price of soap by means of a 'soap trust'. After working all night reading a pile of papers nearly four feet thick and consuming a bottle of champagne and two dozen oysters, Smith opined "There is no answer to this action in libel, and the damages must be enormous." The newspapers subsequently paid Lever £50,000 (just over £4,100,000 at 2010 prices ), more than four times the previous record for a defamation action.

In February 1908 Smith was made a King's Counsel by Lord Loreburn, on the same day as his friend and rival from Wadham College, future Home Secretary Sir John Simon.

At the Bar he became one of the best known and most highly-paid barristers in the country, making over £10,000 per year before the First World War. His spending was commensurate with this income even after he took lower paid jobs in government in later years.

In one of the best-known cases in which Smith was involved he successfully defended Ethel le Neve, mistress of Hawley Harvey Crippen ('Dr Crippen') against a charge of murder; le Neve was accused of killing Crippen's wife. Crippen was tried separately and convicted.