Friends of Hastings Cemetery

William Langham was a solicitor practising in London from 1779.  Three of his sons also became solicitors.  (A grandson, Samuel Frederick Langham, was the Coroner for the City of London who heard the inquest into the death of Catherine Eddowes, murdered by Jack The Ripper, on September 30, 1888.)

1828 - ‎London Gazette
Notice is hereby given, that the Partnership heretofore, subsisting between William Langham the younger, James George Langham, and Samuel Frederick Langham, of Bartlett's Buildings, Holborn, London, as Attorneys and Solicitors, under the firm of W. J, and S. Langham, is this day dissolved by reciprocal consent, as regards the said William Lanham, who retires therefrom, and will in future carry on business on his  own account..........

One of those, James George Langham, came to live at 1 High Street in 1838.

Census – 1851; 1 High Street

LANGHAM  James George  Head    57   Solicitor   Holborn
LANGHAM  Elizabeth   Wife           57   Solicitor's Wife  St Marylebone
LANGHAM  Cecilia Ann   Dau         26   Solicitor's Dau   St Pancras  
LANGHAM  Augusta Caroline   Dau 20   Solicitor's Dau   Holborn
LANGHAM  Emily Laura  Dau          17   Solicitor's Dau   Holborn
LANGHAM  Frederick Adolphus Son 15   Solicitor's Son   Holborn

He was known as the "smugglers' Lawyer, and reputedly was often paid in kind, with smuggled goods including casks of brandy!

John Banks, in a lecture later published as  "Reminiscences of Smugglers and Smuggling", tells of smugglers, caught in the act, being defended by Langham, who demanded one of the confiscated kegs be brought into the courtroom.  He suggested the Magistrate sample the contents.  When he did so he found it was seawater.

THE LONDON GAZETTE, OCTOBER 28, 1862
NOTICE is hereby given, that the Partnership heretofore subsisting between James George Langham and Samuel Frederick Langham, of Bartletts-buiidings, Holborn, London, and .Hastings  in the county of Sussex, as Attorneys and Solicitors, has been dissolved by mutual consent as from the 12th day of August last.—Dated this 21st day of October 1862.
James George Langham.
Samuel Frederick Langham.

Hastings and St Leonards Observer - Saturday 30 April 1870
April 23rd, at 1, High street, Hastings, Elizabeth, for 57 years the beloved wife of James George Langham, Esq., Solicitor, of Hastings, the year of her age. April 24th.

J. G Langham died on the 7th August 1877 aged 84.  There is a memorial tablet in St Clement's Church which is dedicated to him and his wife Elizabeth, who predeceased him on the 23rd April 1870.

[Some of this information is taken from Square Toes and Formal - Sketches of Some of the People and Places Who Have Been Associated with Young Coles & Langdon Over the Past 175 Years (Paperback) / Author: Christopher Langdon]

Hastings and St Leonards Observer - Saturday 11 August 1877

To-day a grave closes over the remains of one whose name has been for nearly half a century a household word in Hastings— indeed, one may say, in East Sussex.  At the patriarchal age of eighty-four, as full of honours as of years Mr. James George Langham has pass d away!  For more than two generations he has laboured at his profession, and so arduously, indeed that work maybe said to have been, with him' more than labour of love—it was his passion.  He was heart and soul in his practice. Whatever he undertook he did thoroughly and well. He detested half-heartedness as vigorously as he despised shams.  He was, in every sense of the word, the type of the best of lawyers of the old school.  Learned and astute, with an intellect naturally so keen that even time failed to blunt it, leaving it, to the last bright and undimmed, he was as skilled in knowledge of human nature as he was learned in book-law.  His great skill lay in his ability to strip the meretricious gloss from a case—in his power to probe the sophistries in which witness or advocate presented certain views—and by a cross examination, and terse turgidless speech to the Bench take the magistrates into his confidence, and to leave witnesses and solicitors of the opposition maimed and helpless in the legal battle.

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From: Parliamentary Papers: 1780-1849, Volume 16

First Report of the Committee for Bankruptcy and insolvency