Scottish judge stars in new Netflix series
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Lord Patrick PC KC FRSE
One of Scotland’s most distinguished former judges takes centre stage in a new Netflix four-part series entitled The Tokyo Trial with English actor Paul Freeman playing judge Lord Patrick, a former Dean of the Faculty of Advocates and WW1 Royal Flying Corps air ace, who represented the UK on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East – the complex and controversial war crimes trial of Japanese leaders which sat for two-and-a-half years from 1946 to 1948.
William Donald Patrick was a real-life hero who attained the rank of flight commander and who scored seven victories in air battles above the trenches in Flanders. He ended the war in a notorious German Prisoner-of-War camp after having been shot down near Messines on April 10, 1918.
Patrick was born in 1889 in Ayrshire where his father served as Sheriff Clerk. He attended the University of Glasgow at the age of 16 and was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1913. He joined the RFC shortly after the outbreak of war in 1914 but after the war was quickly able to establish a reputation for his keen intellect and forensic attention to detail. He served as standing counsel to the Department for Agriculture in Scotland and also as an advocate depute.
He was unanimously elected Dean the Faculty in 1937 and was made a Senator of the College of Justice in 1939. In 1949, Patrick was appointed to the Privy Council. He died in 1967 aged 77.
Photo credit: Wegner, United States Army Signal Corps. Harry S. Truman Library & Museum
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