KEATING, SIR HENRY SINGER (1804-1888), judge, third son of Lieutenant-general Sir Henry Sheehy Keating, K.C.B., by his wife, the eldest daughter of James of Annandale, co. Dublin, was born at Dublin in 1804. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1832, and joined the Oxford circuit and attended the Gloucestershire sessions. He became a queen’s counsel in 1849 and a bencher of his inn, sat for Reading as a liberal from 1852 to 1859, was solicitor-general from May 1857 to February 1858, and again in June 1859, in the two administrations of Lord Palmerston, and on 14 Dec. 1859 was promoted to the bench of the common pleas. In 1875 he retired upon a pension and was sworn of the privy council. He died at St. Leonards on 1 Oct. 1888. He was a learned and unobtrusive judge, a skilful pleader, and while at the bar was, with Mr. Justice Willes, an editor of the third (1849) and fourth editions (1856) of John William Smith’s ‘Leading Cases.’ In 1843 he married the third daughter of Major-general Evans, R.A.
[Foss’s Judges of England; Law Magazine, iv. 220; Times, 6 Oct. 1888.] J. A. H. {J. A. Hamilton}
Source: Lee, Sidney [Editor], Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. XXX. Johnes – Kenneth, published 1892 by MacMillan and Co., New York & Smith, Elder, & Col, London, p. 275. Available via books.google.com.
Update – 22 Jan 2008: Also see this earlier biography of Sir Henry.