INSIDE THE LATEST CAMBERWELL QUARTERLY

John Hurst recalls the men who gave their names to two of our roads

Talfourd Road is named after Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, who was born in 1795. He was a lawyer, Member of Parliament and an author. Denman Road gets its name from Thomas Denman, born in 1779. Both men died in 1854.

Talfourd was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1821. In 1835 he was elected as the Radical Party MP for the Reading constituency, where he was born. He was re-elected in 1847.

He introduced a Copyright Bill in 1837. It eventually became law in 1842, after many amendments following fierce opposition. Charles Dickens dedicated The Pickwick Papers to Talfourd and was one of the mourners at his funeral which took place at West Norwood Cemetery. He became a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in 1849. He wrote for the London Magazine, was a law reporter for The Times and the author of a number of poems and law-related articles.

Thomas Denman was born in London, educated at Eton and Cambridge and called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1806. He enjoyed rapid success and distinguished himself at the trial of members of The Luddite Movement. He was one of the counsels to Queen Caroline, the wife of George IV, in their divorce proceedings relating to her suspected adultery.

He was elected to parliament in 1818 for the Wareham constituency where he stood as a Whig and then in 1819 for the Nottingham constituency. In 1830 he was made Attorney General and two years later became Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench. He was raised to the peerage in 1834 as Baron Denman of Dovedale in the County of Derby.