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Early Life & Education
Seaborne Davies was born on the 26th June 1904. His mother was Claudia Davies. His father was David S. Davies. Davies senior was a sea captain. Seaborne Davies was born in Pwllheli, a market town on the Llyn peninsula in Gwynedd, north-west Wales.
Seaborne Davies attended Pwllheli Grammar School before going on to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. Here he achieved a first-class degree in law in 1924. Whilst at Aberystwyth Seaborne Davies was president of the Students’ Council.
Seaborne Davies then went on to continue his law studies at St. John’s College, Cambridge. In 1928, he came first in the law tripos. He was awarded the prestigious Yorke Prize in 1928 for his long law essay.
Seaborne Davies was called to the bar. His first teaching post was at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the University of London, where he taught for some sixteen years, first as a lecturer and then reader in law from 1929 until 1945.
During the Second World War Seaborne Davies served in the Nationality Division at the Home Office. He was secretary to the Naturalisation Revocation Committee between 1944 and 1945.
Political Career
Seaborne Davies was elected a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for the Caernarvon Boroughs in the May 1945 General Election. Seaborne Davies took over the seat from David Lloyd George, who had been made a hereditary peer despite his attacks on the peerage in earlier life.[i] Seaborne Davies polled 27,754 votes and retained the seat for the Liberals. His opponent was Professor JE Daniel, who stood for Plaid Cymru. During his campaign, Seaborne Davies argued for a Secretary of State for Wales and a Welsh Advisory Council.
Seaborne Davies subsequently lost his seat to the Conservative Party candidate, DA Price-White, in the July 1945 General Election. Seaborne Davies tenure as an MP was one of the shortest on record. His predecessor, David Lloyd George, had had one of the longest.
Liverpool Career
Seaborne Davies was appointed to the Chair in Common Law at the University of Liverpool in 1946. He held this post until 1971, a period of twenty-five years. Seaborne Davies was a committed teacher. One biographer has noted that he was “a great teacher of the law who took an enormous interest in his students.”[ii] Some of his own views on the public responsibilities of law teachers and teaching can be gleaned from a chapter contribution for a British-Canadian-American symposium on law teaching that took place in New York in 1962. The proceedings of which were published in 1963.[iii] Seaborne Davies notes that the public responsibilities of the university teacher must “arise from inward conviction”[iv] not because of outward pressure. In relation to teaching and law reform, Seaborne Davies notes that the first contribution of a law teacher is to “beget and foster the inquiring and the sensibly critical mind.”[v] On which point he continues, “The murder of the adolescent interest by the excruciating boredom of the bad public expositor is the most capital of all academic crimes.”[vi] It seems as though Seaborne Davies was no murderer of undergraduate interest.
In terms of administration activity at the University, Hudson notes that Seaborne Davies “brought a sardonic anarchism to his treatment of timetables, deadlines and questionnaires which was the despair of University authorities and led one Vice-Chancellor to express his great surprise that anything done by Professor Seaborne Davies should be put forward as a precedent.”[vii] Seaborne Davies himself noted, “Members of law faculties are apt to be quite favourite choices for general university chores – and derive consolation from the implied compliment.”[viii]
In addition to his chair, Seaborne Davies was also Warden of Derby Hall from 1947 until 1971. He also served as Dean of the Faculty of Law from 1946 until 1956 and from 1960 until 1963 and 1964 until 1971. He was appointed a Pro-Chancellor from 1956 until 1960. Seaborne Davies was also Life President of the University of Liverpool Rugby Club.
One of his biographers, Dr. John Graham Jones, has argued that Seaborne Davies was largely responsible for the 1966 Faculty of Law Building (now the South Campus Teaching Hub)[ix], which was opened by Liverpool law graduate Lord Justice Sellers in 1966. Indeed, Hudson has argued that Seaborne Davies would view the Faculty of Law building as his memorial.[x] At the opening ceremony for the building Seaborne Davies greeted guests with the following observation that the new building was a welcome change from “long habitation in mean, dingy, and restrictive surroundings.”[xi] Kelly continues: “To mark the opening Downing College, Cambridge presented a beautiful bound MS of Maitland’s Lectures on Jurisprudence and the Dean himself [Seaborne Davies] presented a number of valuable English legal works of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”[xii]
Seaborne Davies worked in the areas of criminal law and intellectual property law. His main research interest was the history of patents.[xiii] He published a number of articles in leading journals, including the Modern Law Review and the Law Quarterly Review. In addition to patents, these articles ranged over topics including the history of the Inns of Court and Wales,[xiv] monopolies,[xv] irresistible impulse in English law,[xvi] the House of Lords and criminal law,[xvii] the court of criminal appeal,[xviii] child killing,[xix] abortion,[xx] and the public responsibilities of the law teacher.[xxi] Seaborne Davies also contributed to essay collections.[xxii] He does not appear to have produced a book or monograph.
Seaborne Davies was a member of the Criminal Law Revision Committee. His views on the law of dishonesty led to reforms in the Theft Act 1968. He was President of the Society of Public Teachers of Law (now the Society of Legal Scholars) in 1960–61.[xxiii] In 1962 he was the Cooley Lecturer at the University of Michigan. In 1967 Seaborne Davies delivered the BBC Wales annual lecture on “Welsh makers of English law.” He included a law reformer from each of the Welsh counties in his lecture.
Outside the University
In addition to his University work, Seaborne Davies also served as the chairman of the Liverpool Licensing Planning Committee. He held this position for three years, from 1960 until 1963.
Seaborne Davies, particularly in retirement, was able to continue his interest in rugby with various administrative posts. In addition to his University rugby presidency, he was also Vice President of London Welsh RFC and President of Pwllheli Sports Club for a period of ten years.
Seaborne Davies also served as a magistrate in Liverpool, Caernarvon and Gwynedd.
He was High Sheriff of Caernarvonshire in 1967-68. He was also president of the National Eisteddfod Council in 1958, 1973 and 1977.
Seaborne Davies retired in 1971 and retired to Caernarfon. He remained connected to the University by his appointment as an emeritus professor (1971-1984). There was a celebratory retirement dinner at the Adelphi attended by students and staff and other local dignitaries.
In terms of likeness, the University of Liverpool acquired a portrait of Seaborne Davies in 1978. The oil on canvas portrait is 63cm high and 49cm wide and resides in the Victoria Gallery & Museum. The portrait is by David Griffiths (b.1939) and is entitled, “David Richard Seabourne Davies (1904–1984)”[xxiv].There is also some archive footage of Seaborne Davies from a 1956 University of Liverpool Guild Ball.[xxv]
He had two homes. One at Y Garn, Pwllheli, and one at 8 Gayton Crescent, Hampstead, London. On his choice of retirement location Seaborne Davies is reported to have said, “Well, you see, in Pwllheli the transition from this life to the next is almost imperceptible.”[xxvi]
Seaborne Davies died on the 26th October 1984, aged 80 years.
Author: Dr John Tribe (September 2023)
References
[i] See further: Tribe, J. Parliamentarians and Bankruptcy: The Disqualification of MPs and Peers from Sitting in the Palace of Westminster (2014) King's Law Journal, 25(1), 79-101.
[ii] Hudson, p. 169.
[iii] Seaborne Davies, D. The Public Responsibilities of the Academic Law Teacher (1962) British-Canadian American Conference on Legal Education-Proceedings of the General Sessions New York, N. Y. Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 14, Issue 1 (1961-1962), pp. 67-124. Hereafter Seaborne Responsibilities.
[iv] Seaborne Responsibilities, p.69.
[v] Ibid, p. 74.
[vi] Seaborne Responsibilities, p.74.
[vii] Hudson, p.170.
[viii] Seaborne Responsibilities, p.71.
[ix] Jones, JG. Professor David Richard Seaborne Davies (1904-1984), lawyer and politician. Dictionary of Welsh Biography, 2011.
[x] Hudson, p.169.
[xi] Kelly, T. For Advancement of Learning – The University of Liverpool1881-1891. University of Liverpool Press, Liverpool, 1981, p.374.
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] Seaborne Davies, D. The Early History of the Patent Specification (1934) Law Quarterly Review, Vol. 50, Issue 1 (January), pp. 86-109. See also: Seaborne Davies, D. The Early History of the Patent Specification (1934) Law Quarterly Review, Vol. 50, Issue 2 (April), pp. 260-274.
[xiv] Published in the anniversary year of law teaching at Aberystwyth: Seaborne Davies, D. Cardiganshire and the Inns of Courts to 1850 (1971) Cambrian Law Review, Vol. 7, pp. 91-99.
[xv] Seaborne Davies, D. Further Light on the Case of Monopolies (1932) Law Quarterly Review, Vol. 48, Issue 3 (July), pp. 394-414
[xvi] Seaborne Davies, D. Irresistible Impulse in English Law (1939) Canadian Bar Review, Vol. 17, Issue 3 (March), pp. 147-165.
[xvii] Seaborne Davies, D. The House of Lords and the Criminal Law (1961) Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law (New Series), Vol. 6, Issue 2 (December 1961), pp. 104-114.
[xviii] Seaborne Davies, D. The Court of Criminal Appeal: The First Forty Years (1951) Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law (New Series), Vol. 1, Issue 6 (1951), pp. 425-441.
[xix] Seaborne Davies, D. Child-Killing in English Law - Part I (1937) Modern Law Review, Vol. 1, Issue 3 (December), pp. 203-223. See also: Seabrone Davies, D. Child-Killing in English Law - Part II (1938) Modern Law Review, Vol. 1, Issue 4 (March), pp. 269-287.
[xx] Seaborne Davies, D. The Law of Abortion and Necessity (1938) Modern Law Review, Vol. 2, Issue 2 (September), pp. 126-138.
[xxi] Seaborne Davies, D. The Public Responsibilities of the Academic Law Teacher (1962) British-Canadian-American Conference on Legal Education-Proceedings of the General Sessions New York, N. Y. Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 14, Issue 1 (1961-1962), pp. 67-124.
[xxii] See for example: The Modern approach to criminal law : collected essays / by D. Seaborne Davies, W. T. S. Stallybrass, R. M. Jackson [and others]... Preface by Professor P. H. Winfield. London : Macmillan and co., limited, 1945.
[xxiii] Lord McNair, sometime Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool had also been president of the SPTL.
[xxiv] See: https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/david-richard-seabourne-davies-19041984-66932
[xxv] See further: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOLgB1Oj16k
[xxvi] Hudson, p.171.
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