Exhibit

     Boyle, Sir Edward, first baronet 1848-1909, legal writer, born in London on 6 Sept. 1848, was elder son of Edward O'Boyle, civil engineer, of London, by his wife Eliza, daughter of James Gurney of Culloden, Norfolk. He was educated privately for the army, but finally became a surveyor, and was elected a fellow of the Surveyors' Institution in 1878. After some twenty years' practice of that profession, he forsook it for the bar, to which he was called at the Inner Temple on 17 Nov. 1887. He rapidly acquired a lucrative practice as an expert in rating and compensation cases, utilising the experience gained in his former profession, and took silk in 1898. Interesting himself in politics, he contested as a conservative Hastings in 1900 and Rye in 1903 unsuccessfully. He was created a baronet on 14 Dec. 1904. In the arbitration as to the purchase by the Straits Settlements government of the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company in 1905 Boyle acted as the arbitrator nominated by the company under the authority of a special ordinance (Straits Settlements Ordinance vii. of 1905, s. ii.). At the general election in Jan. 1906 he was returned M.P. for Taunton. Ill-health compelled his retirement from parliament in 1909. He travelled widely and was a F.R.G.S. He died at his London residence, 63 Queen's Gate, on 19 March 1909. Portraits by the Hon. John Collier and in the robes of a K.. by Herbert Olivier are in the possession of his son, who presented a replica of the latter picture to the Surveyors' Institution.
     Boyle married on 18 March 1874 Constance Jane, younger daughter of William Knight, J.., of Kensington Park Gardens, senior partner of Knight & Sons, soap manufacturers, of Silvertown, E., and had issue a son, Edward (b. 12 June 1878), who succeeded him in the baronetcy, and a daughter.
     Boyle was joint author of three important legal treatises: 1. Principles of Rating, with G. Humphreys Davies, 1900; 2nd edit. 1905. 2. Railway and Canal Traffic, with Thomas Waghorn (d. 1 Dec. 1911), 3 vols. 1901. 3. The Law and Practice of Compensation, with Thomas Waghorn, 1903.

Sources:
     The Times, 20 March 1909
     Burke's Peerage, 1909
     Law List, 1908
     Dod's Parliamentary Companion, 1907
     private information.

Contributor: C. E. A. B. [Cyril Edward Alfred Bedwell]

Published: 1912