Joseph Chitty

Joseph Chitty was an English lawyer and legal writer who lived from 12 March 1776 to 17 February 1841 and became one of the most prolific and widely used legal authors of his era. He practiced initially as a special pleader before his call to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1816, kept chambers at 1 Pump Court, and trained a number of lawyers who went on to notable careers themselves, including John Walter Hulme, later the first Chief Justice of Hong Kong. Between 1799 and his retirement from practice in 1833, he published a long series of practitioners' treatises covering bills of exchange, pleading, the law of apprenticeship, the game laws, commercial law, criminal law, and the prerogatives of the Crown, works that became standard references in English legal practice. He married Elizabeth Woodward and had eight children, four of whom became lawyers, and his sons carried his name forward through further editions of his treatises, including the treatise on contracts that developed into the long-running reference work known as Chitty on Contracts.