William Pickford, 1st Baron Sterndale

William Pickford, 1st Baron Sterndale PC (1 October 1848–7 August 1923) was a British lawyer and judge. He served as a Lord Justice of Appeal between 1914 and 1918, as President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division between 1918 and 1919 and as Master of the Rolls between 1919 and 1923.

Background and education
Pickford was educated at Liverpool College and Exeter College, Oxford.He took silk in 1893 and became leader of the Northern Circuit. He was Recorder of Oldham 1901-1904 and of Liverpool 1904 -07. Addressing local juniors when he was made Recorder of Liverpool he referred to the old traditions and the supreme importance of suppressing NO item of evidence helpful to the prisoner. Their function was to obtain justice, and not to snatch conviction. " You may succeed to convict a man" he said, "by trapping a witness or by keeping back some fact, but such success is failure, for you have been untrue to your highest self and have prostituted your profession."

As a junior he appeared in the famous Maybrick trial and later became one of the biggest men in commercial cases representing Great Britain in Paris after the Dogger Bank incident when Russia sunk some Hull trawlers.

Legal and judicial career
Pickford was appointed a judge of the High Court in 1907 and a Lord Justice of Appeal and sworn of the Privy Council in 1914. In 1916 he was chairman of the Dardanelles Commission. He was made President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division and raised to the peerage as Baron Sterndale, of King Sterndale in the County of Derby, in 1918. The following year he became Master of the Rolls, a post he held until his death.

Family
Lord Sterndale married Alice Mary Brooke, of Sibton Park Suffolk, on 18 August 1880. They had two daughters, Dorothy Frances Pickford (b. 1881) and Mary (Molly) Ada Pickford (b. 1884). His wife Alice died after childbirth on 5 September 1884. Sterndale's daughter the Hon. Mary Ada Pickford sat as Conservative Member of Parliament for Hammersmith North from 1931 to 1934. Lord Sterndale died in August 1923, aged 74, when the barony became extinct. He is buried at King Sterndale Church near Buxton, Derbyshire.