Swiney Prize

The Swiney Prize, a British award made every five years by the Royal Society of Arts with the Royal College of Physicians, was set up by the will of George Swiney, an English physician who died in 1844.

The prize came to be awarded alternately for medical jurisprudence and general jurisprudence. New cups were designed, after an initial stable period when a pattern by Daniel Maclise was reused. The first new design came in 1919, by Melvin Oliver.[1][2][3][4]

George Swiney (1793–1844)

George Swiney, a physician, was the son of William Swiney (1748–1829), Admiral of the Red. He was born on 8-Jun-1793 at St Marylebone, Middlesex, England. He was educated at Edinburgh University, where he graduated M.D. in 1816. Having retired from practice, he settled in London, lived a secluded life, and acquired a reputation as an eccentric. He spent much time on his will and died at Grove Street, Camden Town, on 21 January 1844. He bequeathed £5,000 to the Society of Arts, to found a quinquennial prize for the best published essay on jurisprudence, the prize to be adjudicated jointly by the Society of Arts and the London College of Physicians; and £5,000 to the British Museum to found a lectureship in geology, the lecturer to be an M.D. of Edinburgh.[5]

List of winners

• 1849 John Samuel Martin Fonblanque and John Ayrton Paris, Medical Jurisprudence, first award[6]
• 1854 Leone Levi, Commercial Law of the World.[7]
• 1859 Alfred Swaine Taylor, Medical Jurisprudence[7]
• 1864 Henry James Sumner Maine, Ancient Law
• 1869, William Augustus Guy, Principles of Forensic Medicine[7]
• 1874 Robert Joseph Phillimore, Commentaries on International Law[7][8]
• 1879 Norman Chevers, Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for India[7]
• 1884 Sheldon Amos[9]
• 1889 Charles Meymott Tidy, Legal Medicine[10]
• 1894 Thomas Erskine Holland, Elements of Jurisprudence[8][11]
• 1899 John Dixon Mann[12]
• 1905 Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, History of English Law before Edward the First[8][9]
• 1909 Charles Arthur Mercier, Criminal Responsibility[13]
• 1914 John William Salmond, Jurisprudence or the Theory of the Law [8][14]
• 1919 Charles Arthur Mercier, Crime and Criminals[13]
• 1924 Paul Vinogradoff[15]
• 1929 Sydney Alfred Smith, Forensic Medicine[16]
• 1934 William Searle Holdsworth[17]
• 1939 James Couper Brash and John Glaister, Medico-Legal Aspects of the Ruxton Case[1]
• 1944 Carlton Kemp Allen, Law in the Making[18]
• 1949 John Glaister, Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology[19]
• 1954 George Whitecross Paton, Textbook of Jurisprudence (2nd edition)[20]
• 1959 Keith Simpson, Forensic Medicine (3rd edition)[21]
• 1964 Julius Stone, The Province and Function of Law, and Glanville Williams Criminal Law: The General Part[22]
• 1969 Francis Edward Camps, Gradwohl's Legal Medicine (2nd edition)[23]
• 1974 Stroud Francis Charles Milsom[24]
• 1979 John Kenyon Mason, Forensic Medicine for Lawyers and his edition of The Pathology of Violent Injury[25]
• 1984 Patrick Atiyah, Promises, Morals and Law[26]
• 1989 P. D. G. Skegg, Law, Ethics and Medicine: Studies in Medical Law[27]
• 1994 John Kelly, A Short History of Western Legal Theory[28]
• 2000 Ronald Dworkin[29]
• 2004 Nicola Lacey, A Life of H.L.A. Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream[30][31]

Notes

1. Glancy, Reginald (1939). "Eastern Markets". Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 88 (4538): 3–18. JSTOR 41359461.
2. Botting, Geoff (1998). "The Midlands Centre: The Swiney Prize 1999". RSA Journal. 146 (5486): 109. JSTOR 41380170.
3. "Swiney Prize". The British Medical Journal. 1 (1174): 1291. 1883. JSTOR 25263511.
4. Geoffrey Davenport; Ian McDonald; Caroline Moss-Gibbons (2001). The Royal College of Physicians and Its Collections: An Illustrated History. Royal College of Physicians. p. 120. ISBN 978-0-907383-83-3.
5. Lee, Sidney, ed. (1898). "Swiney, George" . Dictionary of National Biography. 55. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
6. "Original papers: The Swiney Prize-difficulties of connecting art and manufacture". The Journal of Design and Manufactures. VI. 1852.
7. "The Swiney Prize". The British Medical Journal. 2 (1186): 589. 1883. JSTOR 25264179.
8. "The Swiney Prize". Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 62 (3192): 195. 1914. JSTOR 41341424.
9. Royal College of Physicians of London, List of the Fellows and Members (1906) pp. 303–4; archive.org.
10. Linton, James D.; Forbes, George (1889). "Journal of the Society for Arts, Vol. 37, no. 1888". The Journal of the Society of Arts. 37 (1888): 139–160. JSTOR 41327883.
11. "Sir Thomas Erskine Holland - law and international".
12. Willis J. Elwood; Ann Félicité Tuxford (1 January 1984). Some Manchester Doctors: A Biographical Collection to Mark the 150th Anniversary of the Manchester Medical Society. Manchester University Press. p. 203. ISBN 978-0-7190-1754-4.
13. "Mercier, Charles Arthur (1852 - 1919)".
14. "Salmond, Sir John William (1862–1924)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.
15. "The Swiney Gup". Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 73 (3765): 216–217. 1925. JSTOR 41356862.
16. White, Brenda M. "Smith, Sir Sydney Alfred". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36159. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
17. Fletcher, Hanslip (1934). "London from the Pavement". Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 82 (4253): 720–735. JSTOR 41360138.
18. "Swiney Prize for Work on Jurisprudence, 1944". Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 92 (4658): 122. 1944. JSTOR 41361699.
19. "Award of Swiney Prize for Medical Jurisprudence". Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 97 (4787): 151. 1949. JSTOR 41363770.
20. "Award of Swiney Prize". Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 102 (4917): 131–132. 1954. JSTOR 41365645.
21. "The Swiney Prize Cup". Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 107 (5032): 230. 1959. JSTOR 41366434.
22. "Award of the Swiney Prize for 1964". Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 112 (5091): 138–139. 1964. JSTOR 41367536.
23. Watson, K. D. "Camps, Francis Edward". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/30896. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
24. "Professor Stroud Francis Charles (Toby) Milsom | Squire Law Library".
25. Knight, B. (1979). "News and Notes". British Medical Journal. 1 (6159): 349–352. doi:10.1136/bmj.1.6159.349. PMC 1597717. PMID 421122.
26. "ANNUAL REPORT OF THE COUNCIL 230th Session 1983-4". Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 132 (5337): 572–589. 1984. JSTOR 41373791.
27. "Rsa Report". RSA Journal. 137 (5393): 269–274. 1989. JSTOR 41374868.
28. Matthews, Peter; Wedd, Kate; Hilton, Kevin; Muir, Jean; Bloomfield, Anne; Hollaway, Antony; Eedle, James; Allan, David (1994). "General News". RSA Journal. 142 (5452): 15–23. JSTOR 41376533.
29. "FAS Faculty Honors and Awards Through August 2002". Archived from the original on 11 January 2015. Retrieved 26 April 2014.
30. http://www.law.nyu.edu/global/globalvisitors/distinguishedglobalfellows/lacey
31. http://www.crim.ox.ac.uk/publications.php?theme=criminol&what=recent&sort=Title

Further reading

• Eleanor Thompson, The Swiney Prize: 150 years of goldsmiths' work, Apollo: The international magazine of arts, ISSN 0003-6536, Nº. 395, 1995, pp. 30–37

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1898). "Swiney, George". Dictionary of National Biography. 55. London: Smith, Elder & Co.