Francis Elrington Ball

Francis Elrington Ball, known as F. Elrington Ball (1863-1928), was an Irish author and legal historian best known for his work “Judges in Ireland 1221-1921” (1926). The youngest son of John Thomas Ball (from 1815 to 1898), Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1875 to 1880, and his wife Catherine Elrington, Ball did not succeed in seeking parliamentary elections (as a unionist) in the UK general election of 1900. South Dublin. His father represented the University of Dublin in parliament from 1868 to 1875. Ball, however, is best known for his scholarship, especially his work on Swift, the local history of Dublin and the history of the judiciary in Ireland from 1221 to 1921. The destruction of the Four Courts in 1922, during the Irish Civil War, as well as the state archives and legal archives it contained (especially the archives of the Irish State Archives Office), made Ball's preliminary research on the history of the Irish judiciary up to 1921 especially valuable for later scholars. In a review published in the Irish Law Times & Solicitors' Journal, he is described as "a truly marvelous thickening of the judicial history, including an exhaustive study of a long period, the early part of which was still unclear." In the same review, Ball described as "a writer very attentive and accurate, whose work is always characterized by thorough and thorough research." Ball was also the governor of the Blue Coat School, Oxmantown, Dublin.