John Coleridge Patteson, his mother’s second child and eldest son, was born at No. 9, Grower Street, Bedford Square, on the 1st of April, 1827, and baptized on the 8th.  Besides the elder half-sister already mentioned, another sister, Frances Sophia Coleridge, a year older than, and one brother, James Henry, nearly two years younger than Coleridge, made up the family.

Three years later, in 1830, Mr. Patteson was raised to the Bench, at the unusually early age of forty.

It is probable that there never was a period when the Judicial Bench could reckon a larger number of men distinguished not only for legal ability but for the highest culture and for the substantial qualities that command confidence and respect.  The middle of the nineteenth century was a time when England might well be proud of her Judges.

There was much in the habits of the Bench and Bar to lead to close and friendly intimacy, especially on the circuits.  When legal etiquette forbade the use of any public conveyance, and junior barristers shared post-chaises, while the leaders travelled in their own carriages, all spent a good deal of time together, and it was not unusual for ladies to go a great part of the circuit with their husbands, especially when it lay in the direction of their own neighbourhood.  The Judges’ families often accompanied them, especially at the summer assize, and thus there grew up close associations between their children, which made their intimacy almost like that of relationship.  Almost all, too, lived in near neighbourhood in those parts of London that now are comparatively deserted, but which were then the especial abodes of lawyers, namely, those adjacent to Bedford Square, where the gardens were the daily resort of their children, all playing together and knowing one another with that familiarity that childhood only gives.

’Sir John Patteson’s contemporaries have nearly all, one by one, passed away,’ writes one of them, Sir John Taylor Coleridge.  ’He has left few, if any, literary monuments to record what his intellectual powers were; and even in our common profession the ordinary course and practice are so changed, that I doubt whether many lawyers are now familiar with his masterly judgments; but I feel that I speak the truth when I describe him as a man of singularly strong common sense, of great acuteness, truthfulness, and integrity of judgment.  These were great judicial qualities, and to these he added much simplicity and geniality of temper and manners; and all these were crowned by a firm, unhesitating, devout belief in the doctrines of our faith, which issued in strictness to himself and the warmest, gentlest charity to his fellow-creatures.  The result was what you might expect.  Altogether it would be hard to say whether you would characterise him as a man unusually popular or unusually respected.’