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. Eastern Markets, Reginald Glancy, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts Vol. 88, No. 4538 (10 November 1939) , pp. 3-18, at pp. 15–6. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41359461
2. Geoff Botting, The Midlands Centre: The Swiney Prize 1999, RSA Journal Vol. 146, No. 5486 (1998), p. 109. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41380170
3. Swiney Prize, The British Medical Journal Vol. 1, No. 1174 (30 June 1883), p. 1291. Published by: BMJ. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/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. http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/DLDecArts/DLDecArts-idx?type=div&did=DLDECARTS.JOURNDESV06.I0022&isize=text
7. The Swiney Prize, The British Medical Journal Vol. 2, No. 1186 (22 September 1883), p. 589. Published by: BMJ. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25264179
8. The Swiney Prize, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts Vol. 62, No. 3192 (23 January 1914), p. 195. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41341424
9. Royal College of Physicians of London, List of the Fellows and Members (1906) pp. 303–4; archive.org.
10. The Journal of the Society of Arts Vol. 37, No. 1888 (25 January 1889), pp. 139-160, at p. 139. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41327883
11. http://gluedideas.com/Encyclopedia-Britannica-Volume-11-Part-2-Gunnery-Hydroxylamine/Sir-Thomas-Erskine-Holland.html
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. http://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/biogs/E002707b.htm
14. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/salmond-sir-john-william-8329
15. The Swiney Cup, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts Vol. 73, No. 3765 (16 January 1925) , pp. 216-217. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/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. London from the Pavement, Hanslip Fletcher. Journal of the Royal Society of Arts Vol. 82, No. 4253 (25 May 1934), pp. 720-735, at p. 720. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41360138
18. Swiney Prize for Work on Jurisprudence, 1944, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts Vol. 92, No. 4658 (4 February 1944), p. 122. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41361699
19. Award of Swiney Prize for Medical Jurisprudence, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts Vol. 97, No. 4787 (28 January 1949), p. 151. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41363770
20. Award of Swiney Prize, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts Vol. 102, No. 4917 (22 January 1954) , pp. 131-132. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41365645
21. The Swiney Prize Cup, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts Vol. 107, No. 5032 (March 1959), p. 230. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41366434
22. Award of the Swiney Prize of 1964, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts Vol. 112, No. 5091 (February 1964), pp. 138-139. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/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. http://www.squire.law.cam.ac.uk/eminent_scholars/professor_toby_milsom.php
25. British Medical Journal, 3 February 1979, p. 351; PDF.
26. Annual Report of the Council 230th Session 1983-4, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts Vol. 132, No. 5337 (August 1984), pp. 572-589, at p. 283. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41373791
27. RSA Report, RSA Journal, Vol. 137, No. 5393 (April 1989), pp. 269-274, at p. 273. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41374868
28. General News, Peter Matthews, Kate Wedd, Kevin Hilton, Jean Muir, Anne Bloomfield, Antony Hollaway, James Eedle and David Allan, RSA Journal Vol. 142, No. 5452 (August/September 1994) , pp. 15-23, at p. 22. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41376533
29. http://as.nyu.edu/object/aboutas.honorsawards.2002
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.