Charles Boston was born on August 31, 1863, in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, the son of John Edwin Hines and Cecilia (Guyton) Boston. His father was a tin importer, and his mother was the daughter of a high sheriff of Harford County, Maryland. His ancestors on both sides settled in Virginia and on the Eastern Shore of Maryland early in the seventeenth century.
Charles attended Baltimore public and private schools, Baltimore City College, and Johns Hopkins University. Before receiving a degree he left the university to enter business. Deciding upon a legal career, he apprenticed himself to John Prentice Poe, then attorney general of Maryland. He entered the University of Maryland Law School, received the degree of LL. B. , and was admitted to the bar in the same year.
In 1888 Charles Boston moved to New York City, and in 1889 he was admitted to the New York bar. He was admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court in 1893. In the latter year he formed a partnership with William Woodward Baldwin, a relationship which lasted until Baldwin, in February 1896, became third assistant secretary of state. For several years thereafter, Boston was on the legal staff of the Title Guarantee & Trust Company.
In 1901 Boston became associated with the firm of Hornblower, Byrne, Miller & Potter. On the withdrawal of Byrne in 1907, he became a member of the firm and thus entered upon a partnership which, with changing personnel, continued for twenty-eight years. At the time of his death, the firm name was Miller, Boston & Owen. As a member of the firm he was of counsel in many important litigations, including Lehigh Valley Railroad vs. Russia, one of the suits growing out of the Black Tom explosions; reorganization proceedings of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad, and the United States Shipbuilding Company; and suits over the estate of "Diamond Jim" Brady, the estate of Joseph M. Pulitzer, owner of the New York World, and suits involving the murder and will of William M. Rice.
Boston had no inclination to shine as an advocate, but he was renowned as a legal scholar who had an almost photographic memory for cases, statutes, and recorded facts. His indispensability in the work entrusted to his firm was attested by all of his associates. Yet his membership in national, state, and city bar associations was not perfunctory. He was a vice-president, and in 1930-1931 president, of the American Bar Association. He served on committees on uniform state laws, law reform, Torrens title registration, judicial statistics, legal education, aviation, marriage and divorce, and anti-trust legislation. Boston was chairman from 1912 to 1932 of the New York County Lawyers' Association's Committee on Professional Ethics, receiving wide recognition among lawyers for the "Questions and Answers" of that committee, which he inaugurated. On this subject he carried on also an extensive personal correspondence with inquiring lawyers throughout the country. He was chairman of the American Bar Association's Special Committee on Supplementing Canons of Professional Ethics, and personally prepared the volume on this subject published by the association in January 1926.
His own professional life was an embodiment of the ideals which he advocated for others. He was an Independent Democrat who never sought judicial preferment, but who was ready to perform any public service needed. With Henry W. Taft and John M. Bowers, he was a permanent member of the Legal Advisory Board in New York under the Selective Service Law in the First World War, a board which operated with 5, 300 voluntary assistants. He practically abandoned his private practice for this service. He was a studious man, possessing a fine library, and he often carried volumes around with him to be read at odd moments. One of his pet aversions was the national prohibition act which he believed to be unconstitutional. He was an excellent presiding officer, was much in demand as a speaker, and wrote extensively on subjects connected with the committees on which he served. He died of a heart condition, at his home in New York. A portrait of him painted in 1935 by Howard Chandler Christy is in the possession of the New York County Lawyers' Association.
Charles Boston's reputation in his profession was based upon his activity in numerous organization and bar associations, where he fought for the improvement and maintenance of ethical standards among lawyers. He was active as a member and often as chairman of important committees. But it was in the field of legal and judicial ethics that he was most continuously active and effective. He is especially remembered as an active member of the committee, under the chairmanship of Chief Justice William H. Taft, which drafted the Canons of Judicial Ethics adopted by the American Bar Association on July 9, 1924.
Boston was president in the years 1932-1934 of the New York County Lawyers' Association, president of the American Society of Medical Jurisprudence, and of the New York Society of Medical Jurisprudence.
Boston was short and rotund, and mild mannered, except occasionally when his Scottish nature asserted itself.
On September 29, 1900, Charles Boston married Ethel Lyon, of West Orange, New Jersey, by whom he had a daughter, Katherine, and a son, Lyon, who followed the law as a profession.
