Article

Daniel Woodley Prowse

Published Online January 16, 2008

Last Edited December 12, 2013

Daniel Woodley Prowse, judge, publicist, historian (b at Port de Grave, Nfld 12 Sept 1834; d at St John's 27 Jan 1914). Educated in St John's and Liverpool, England, Prowse was called to the Newfoundland Bar in 1859.

Prowse, Daniel Woodley

Daniel Woodley Prowse, judge, publicist, historian (b at Port de Grave, Nfld 12 Sept 1834; d at St John's 27 Jan 1914). Educated in St John's and Liverpool, England, Prowse was called to the Newfoundland Bar in 1859. He practised law and served as a member of the Legislative Assembly between 1861 and 1869, when he was appointed a judge of the Circuit Court and later of the Central District Court. An experienced if sometimes eccentric justice and an indefatigable publicist of Newfoundland, he was a prolific journalist in local, American and British journals and wrote Manual for Magistrates in Newfoundland (1877), Newfoundland Guide Book (1905) and A History of Newfoundland (1895), still the most comprehensive general history of the Island and the first to be written "from the English, Colonial, and Foreign Records."