John Dawson Mayne Queen's Counsel, Personal Computer was a British lawyer and legal expert who served as acting Advocate-General of the Madras Presidency and a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom.
Background
Born on 31 December 1828, to John Mayne (1793–1828), a Dublin lawyer who died before John Dawson was born. His mother, Anna (Graves) Johnson (1798–1864), had first married Edward Johnson (died 1818) Justice of the Peace, of Ballymacash House, Company Antrim. He came from a well-known family and was a grandson of Judge Edward Mayne and Dean Richard Graves.
Education
Mayne had his initial education in Dublin and graduated in law from Trinity College, Dublin.
Career
The Rt. Honorary
He was called to the English bar in 1854, but practised in the United Kingdom from 1854 to 1856 before moving to Madras, India. Mayne served as the Professor of law, logic and moral philosophy at the Presidency College, Madras from 1857 throughout the 1860s. He also served as Assistant Legal Secretary to the Madras government from 1860 to 1872 and as a Clerk of the Crown during the 1860s.
He served as Advocate-General of Madras from 1862 to 1872.
He also served as a Professor of Common Law at the Inns of Court from 1879 to 1883. In 1880, he unsuccessfully contested for the Parliamentary seat at Falmouth.
Annie and "Juris Doctor" (as he was known) divorced their respective spouses so they could marry in May 1873. Annie was reputed to be very beautiful despite her face being marred by a "Portuguese wine mark" (birth mark), which led her to favouring veils in later life.
In 1917, he and Annie died within six weeks of one another, at their home "Goodrest", also known as Shinfield Park, Berkshire.
The gardens were so extensive at Goodrest that they required twenty gardeners to maintain its upkeep. Mayne left no children by either marriage, but took great joy in being both a financial and legal help to many of his relatives.
Membership
In England, despite the scandal, Mayne was appointed and a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 1873, retiring in 1903.
Personality
He was an enthusiastic family historian, producing an impressively long "pedigree" of the Maynes from 1900 back through some thirty generations to Normandy, but beyond the 17th century, like so many family histories of the time, it was riddled with errors of assumption.