Sir Joseph Alfred Sheridan (1882 – 26 December 1964) was an Irish lawyer, judge and administrator who served as a Chief Justice of Kenya and as a Chief Justice of Tanganyika.
Biography
Born in County Mayo, Ireland in 1882. He was educated at Castleknock College and Trinity College, Dublin.Michael O'Sullivan, Mary Robinson: The Life and Times of an Irish Liberal, Blackwater Press, 1993 He was called to the Bar at King's Inns in Ireland in 1907, and thereafter entered the British Colonial Service in Nyasaland in 1908 as a junior clerk.Sir Francis Cowley Burnand, The Catholic Who's who and Yearbook, Volume 34, Burns & Oates, 1935 In 1912, he was appointed assistant to the Attorney-General of Nyasaland and remained in the post until 1913 when he moved to the East Africa Protectorate to become a Resident Magistrate.Sir Francis Cowley Burnand, The Catholic Who's who and Yearbook, Volume 34, Burns & Oates, 1935 In 1919, he was made a Judge on the East Africa Court of Appeal. The following year, he was promoted to a Judgeship on the Supreme Court for Eastern Africa.Sir Francis Cowley Burnand, The Catholic Who's who and Yearbook, Volume 34, Burns & Oates, 1935 In 1929, he left Kenya to take up the position as Chief Justice of Tanganyika. He was knighted in the 1932 King's Birthday Honours; returning to Kenya in 1934 to succeed Sir Jacob Barth as Chief Justice of Kenya.Law journal, 1965, The Law Journal, Volume 115 He retired as Chief Justice in 1946 and died in December 1964.
His son, Sir Dermot (Joseph) Sheridan, later served as Chief Justice of Uganda and as a judge on the High Court of Kenya.
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