Sir George Albert Bonner was a barrister and judge who served as Master of the King’s Bench from 1906 to 1937. In 1927 he was appointed the King’s Remembrancer, the most ancient position in the British judiciary and knighted in the same year.
He published ‘The Law of Motor Cars and Hackney and other Carriages on the Highways’ one of the earliest texts on the laws of automobiles, published in 1898.
Bonner was born on 9 March 1862, the second son of Charles Foster Bonner and Elizabeth Swaine. The family home was Ayscoughfee Hall in Spalding, Lincolnshire where his father had a successful legal practice solicitor based in Lincolnshire and the .
He attended Magdalen College School before going up to read Law at New College, Oxford. He failed his Mods and the mandatory divinity paper, and took a fourth class degree in 1883. None of this seemed to cause an impediment to his later career. He was then called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in June 1885.
Bonner’s first love was horses. He rode and was a member of the Bar’s saddle club the Pegasus Club. His horse “The Count” came 2th in the Bar Heavy-Weight Race in 1911. Bonner remained Chairman of the club during the war years and kept the club alive during this difficult period. He was also a keen golfer and member of the Bar Golfing Society.
He was initiated in the Victoria Rifles Lodge in 1891.
He was Past Assistant Grand Registrar and joined the Midland & Oxford Bar Lodge (now the Midland, Oxford and South Eastern Bar Lodge No 2716) and the Inns of Court Chapter for many years. He was also an honorary member of the Northern Bar Lodge.