Born '' ' Herbert Edmund Davies ' '' at Mountain Ash ( ) , Glamorgan ( now in Rhondda Cynon Taf ) , Wales , he was the third son of Morgan John Davies and Elizabeth Maud Edmunds . Davies was educated at Mountain Ash Grammar School , King 's College London and Exeter College , Oxford , where he received the Vinerian Scholarship . Called to the Bar at Gray 's Inn in 1929 , he worked as examiner and lecturer at the London School of Economics in 1930 and 1931 . During the Second World War , he served in the Army Officers ' Emergency Reserve and in the Royal Welch Fusiliers . He was Recorder of Merthyr Tydfil from 1942 to 1944 , of Swansea from 1944 to 1953 and of Cardiff from 1953 to 1958 . Between 1953 and 1964 , Davies was chairman of the Denbighshire Quarter Sessions . He was knighted in 1958 ( becoming '' ' Sir Edmund Davies ' '' ) when the Lord Chancellor , Lord Kilmuir appointed him a High Court Judge of the Queen 's Bench Division ( as '' ' Mr Justice Edmund Davies ' '' ) , a post he held until 1966 . Davies 's name almost immediately attracted public attention when it fell to him to try a German named Guenther Podola , who had shot and killed a police sergeant ; Podola was convicted of capital murder and hanged in November 1959 . In 1964 he was sent to Aylesbury to try the notorious Great Train Robbery ( 1963 ) case . The severity of the sentences he passed became and has remained controversial
Great Train Robbery ( 1963 )
Great Train Robbery (1963)
Edmund Davies, Baron Edmund-Davies