Monarch George V Name Ransley Thacker Governor Herbert Walter Peebles Role Lawyer | Preceded by Charles Gough Howell Died 1965 Monarch George VI | |
Monarch George V
Edward VIII
George VI Governor Sir Arthur Fletcher
Cecil Barton(Acting)
Sir Arthur Richards | ||
Succeeded by Edward Enoch Jenkins | ||
Ransley Samuel Thacker (Nottingham, 1891 — 1965) was a British lawyer and judge. Employed in the colonial service, he served as Chief Justice of St Vincent (1931–1933), Attorney General of Fiji (1933-1938), and as a judge in British Kenya. He is best known for the jailing of Jomo Kenyatta.
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Legal and political career
In the early 1930s, Thacker served as Chief Justice of St Vincent, and was serving in that role as of 7 July 1933.
Thacker took up the post of Attorney General of Fiji at the end of 1933, passing through Sydney en route to Suva on 21 December.
Thacker served as judge on the Supreme Court of British Kenya from 1938 to 1950. He retired to Nairobi on a ₤474 pension, which he supplemented by practicing Law. He was called out of retirement on 17 November 1952, however, as a First Class Magistrate to preside over the trial of the Kapenguria Six — Jomo Kenyatta and five others accused of organizing the Mau Mau movement. On 8 April 1953, Thacker sentenced them to seven years' hard labour. In his summing up, Thacker declared:
He added:
Kenyatta remained imprisoned until 14 April 1959, and his civil rights were not fully restored until August 1961.
Personal life
Thacker was the son of Henry Thacker and Eliza Jackson.
In 1915, Thacker married Olive Frances Braithwaite in London. They had three children, Daphne Elinor (born 1917), Derek (born c.1919) and Derwent Allan (born 1921).