Background
Barrett-Lennard was the son of Captain Thomas George Barrett-Lennard and Edith Mackenzie.
Barrett-Lennard was the son of Captain Thomas George Barrett-Lennard and Edith Mackenzie.
They had one son, Hugh, who subsequently inherited the Barrett-Lennard baronetcy. Barret-Lennard was appointed as one of the Puisne Judges of the Supreme Court of the Gold Coast (later Ghana) in 1913. He was subsequently a judge in the Straits Settlement.
He was appointed Chief Justice of Jamaica in 1925 and was knighted the following year.
As Chief Justice, in 1929, he ordered the confiscation of the property of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) which had been founded by black activist, Marcus Garvey. He retired in 1932 and after retiring, he claimed his retirement was forced on him by ill health that resulted from having been poisoned.
He returned to London, becoming a lecturer at Birkbeck College and wrote a paper on colonial law published in the Transactions of the Grotius Society.