George Harris (1809–1890) was an English barrister and judge, known as a biographer and legal writer. Early life Born at Rugby on 6 May 1809, he was the eldest son of George Harris (d. 16 January 1856), a solicitor of that town, by his wife Christabella, only daughter of Rear-admiral William Chambers (d. 28 September 1829). On 6 May 1820 he entered Rugby School. He found the school rough, and left to join HMS Spartiate, the flagship of Admiral Sir George Eyre, as a midshipman; but falling ill before it sailed, he gave up the idea of entering the Royal Navy. After a bad time at a private school at Totnes in Devon he was articled to his father in 1825. In 1832 he was admitted as attorney, and in January 1834 became a partner in his father's firm. On 22 June 1838, however, he left Rugby and moved to London. After little more than a year in London, during which he wrote for the British and Foreign Review and other journals, and entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Harris took the post of editor of the Hull Times on 11 September 1839. An attack on the Hull railway line led to his resignation on 21 September 1840 Legal career Harris entered the Middle Temple in December 1839, and was called to the bar on 13 January 1843. He went the Midland circuit, but did not obtain a good practice. Having lost money in railway speculations, and spent time writing, he had money troubles, solved by his marriage in 1848. In April 1853 Harris filled the office of deputy court judge of the Bristol district, and early in 1861 he became acting judge of the county court at Birmingham. In 1862 he was appointed registrar of the court of bankruptcy at Manchester, a post which he retained until 1868, when ill-health compelled him to retire on a pension. Later life Harris was an active member of the Anthropological Society of London, and in 1871 was chosen a vice-president, a position which he retained on the formation of the Anthropological Institute in that year from the Anthropological Society and the Ethnological Society of London. In an essay Plurality of Races, and the Distinctive Character of the Adamite Species he defended polygenism, against biblical monogenism. He also supported biological determinism of human intellectual capacities by gender. In 1876 Harris joined Edward William Cox in