Richard Clarke Sewell was an English lawyer who later moved to Australia.
Background
Sewell, eldest son of Thomas Sewell of Newport, Isle of Wight, brother of James Edwards Sewell, warden of New College, Oxford, Henry Sewell, premier of New Zealand, and of William Sewell, a Church of England clergyman, and the novelist Elizabeth Missing Sewell.
Education
He graduated with a second-class in literature
Career
He was baptised at Newport on 6 February 1803, and entered Winchester College in 1818. He matriculated from Magdalen College, Oxford, on 26 July 1821, was a demy of his college from 1821 until 1837, and a fellow from 1837 to 1856. He served as senior dean of arts in 1838, as bursar 1840, and was vice-president and prælector of natural philosophy in 1843. hum., Bachelor of Arts 1826, Master of Arts 1829, and Doctorate.C.L. 1840.
He was awarded the Newdigate prize in 1825 for an English poem on ‘The Temple of Vesta at Tivoli.’
On 25 June 1830 he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple, became known as a special pleader, and took business on the western circuit and at the Hampshire sessions.
Later in life he went to Australia, where he practised in the criminal law courts, and was in 1857 appointed reader in law to the University of Melbourne. On 17 April 1857, the university conferred on him the first law degree ad eundem awarded by an Australian university, a doctorate of laws (Doctor of Laws), to which he was entitled by virtue of his Oxford doctorate.
Sewell died in the Melbourne suburb of Street Kilda on 7 November 1864, and was buried at Melbourne General Cemetery.