Frank Mellor

Francis Hamilton Mellor CBE KC (13 May 1854 – 26 April 1925) was an English judge and a cricketer who played in first-class cricket matches for Cambridge University, Kent and the Marylebone Cricket Club between 1874 and 1878.^[1] He was born in Bloomsbury, London and died in Paris, France.^[2]

Mellor was part of a distinguished legal family: his father was Sir John Mellor, a judge of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court and among his brothers John William Mellor was Judge Advocate General and a Member of Parliament who became Charman of Ways and Means and Deputy Speaker.^[3] Another brother, Sir James Mellor, was Master of the Supreme Court, King's Remembrancer and King's Coroner, and the first registrar of the Court of Criminal Appeal; Frank Mellor was part author of a standard legal work on Crown Office Practice on which his brother James was cited by The Times as "probably the greatest living authority".^[3] His nephew, John Paget Mellor, who was John William's son, was Treasury Solicitor and was awarded a baronetcy.^[3]

Frank Mellor was educated at Cheltenham College and at Trinity College, Cambridge.^[4] Mellor followed the family tradition and became a lawyer: he was called to the bar in 1880 and then practised on the Northern Circuit.^[4] He served as a special pleader and was the Recorder of Preston from 1898 to 1911; he was called as a King's Counsel in 1903 and served as a county court judge in Manchester from 1911 to his death.^[4]

He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1918 New Year Honours.^[5]

He died suddenly after an operation in Paris.^[3]

He played as a right-handed middle-order batsman and an underarm slow bowler in the Cheltenham cricket team for three seasons and was tried as a lower-order batsman in a single match for the Cambridge University side in 1874, without success.^[1] He returned to the Cambridge first team in 1877 having not progressed beyond the trial matches in the intervening years, and scored 46, his highest in first-class cricket, in his first game back.^[6] Despite a modest batting record – and he did not bowl in first-class cricket – Mellor retained his place in the Cambridge eleven and played in the 1877 University Match, scoring 5 and 15 not out as Oxford won the game easily.^[7] Later in the 1877 season and also in 1878 he played a couple of games for Kent and he also appeared in 1878 in a match for the Marylebone Cricket Club: in none of these games did he achieve anything of note.^[1]