Dogherty, Thomas

, an eminent special pleader and law writer, was born in Ireland, and educated at a country school. He came to England early in life, with an able capacity and habits of industry, but without any direct prospect of employment, or choice of profession. He became, however, clerk to the late Mr. Bower, a very profound lawyer, where, with assiduous study, he acquired a knowledge of special pleading, and the law connected with that abstruse science; and such was his diligence, that in a comparatively short time, he accumulated a collection of precedents and notes that appeared to his employer an effort of great labour and ingenuity. After having been many years with Mr. Bower, the latter advised him to commence special pleader, and in this branch of the profession he soon acquired great reputation; his drafts, which were generally the work of his own hand, being admired as models of accuracy. They were formed according to the neat and concise system of Mr. Bower, and his great friend and patron sir Joseph Yates, many of whose books, notes, and precedents, as well as those of sir Thomas Davenport, Mr. Dogherty possessed. This intense application, however, greatly impaired his health, which was visibly on the decline for many months before his decease. This event took place at his chambers in Clifford’s-inn, Sept. 29, 1805, and deprived the profession of a man of great private worth, modest and unassuming manners, independent mind, and strict honour and probity. Mr. Dogherty was the author and editor of some valuable works on criminal law. He published a new edition of the “Crown Circuit Companion;” and an original composition, in 1786, “The Crown Circuit Assistant,” which is a most useful supplement to the former. In 1800 he edited a new edition of Hale’s “Historia Placitorum Coronae,” in 2 vols. 8vo, with an abridgment of the statutes relating to felonies, | continued to that date, and with notes and references. His common-place and office-books, still in manuscript, are said to be highly valuable. ¹