Charles Rossiter Forwood was an English-born Australian lawyer and Attorney General of Fiji from 1872 to 1873.
Background
Forwood was born on in Tiverton, Devon, the sixth child of Captain Thomas Forwood and Mary Ann Rossiter, of Warncombe House, Newte"s Hill Road, Tiverton, Devon. Esther was the daughter of John De Young, a Spanish Merchant from Gibraltar, and Ann Harris (of Irish ancestry) from Lisbon, Portugal.
Education
He enrolled at Blundell"s School, Tiverton on 15 August 1835 aged 8 years and completed his studies on 14 September 1837.
Career
They had five children, Catherine Esther (b:1850) Charles Henry (b:1852) William Phillip (b:1854) Walter Weech (b:1855) and Marian Nancy (b:1857). In late 1853, the Forwoods, accompanied by their first two children, Catherine Ester (b:1850) and Charles Henry (b:1852), left Portsmouth, England bound for Australia. Forwood established a law practice in Melbourne on his arrival in 1853 and became a successful barrister of Law.
During this time the family lived at Nerrena (renamed Kinnoull) Sorrett Avenue, Malvern.
They had four children, Frank Owen (b:1862) Edward William (b:1864) Florence De Louisiana Fontaine (b:1865) Alfred Ernest Albert (b:1867). In mid-1871, aged 45, Forwood was elected to the board of the Polynesia Company and sailed to Suva, Fiji aboard the Steamship Baclutha on 4 October 1871.
He arrived in Suva, Fiji on 18 October 1871. Whilst in Fiji he served as a Supreme Court judge and filled in as Chief Justice of Fiji in an interim capacity in early 1872, pending the appointment of Sir Charles Street Julian as the first substantive Chief Justice.
He was subsequently appointed Attorney General to Fiji in 1872, a position he served in for two years.
He spent a number of years in Wellington, New Zealand where he practiced law. In 1888 Forwood returned to Melbourne, via Sydney where he was in poor health. On 31 July 1888, Prudence Winch died and was buried in Street Kilda Cemetery.
lieutenant was during a protracted illness in 1889 that Rossiter wrote his autobiography An account of an English Country family since 1700 which he completed in Melbourne on 31 July 1889, plus a subsequent addition to the original An account of the Settlement of Fiji, completed on 31 October 1889.
Forwood died in Toorak, Melbourne, at the age of 62 years.