Henry Sandwith Drinker

Henry Sandwith Drinker, Jr. (September 15, 1880 – 1965) was an American lawyer and amateur musicologist. In 1964, the American Bar Association gave Drinker the American Bar Association Medal, stating that Drinker's monumental treatise Legal Ethics (Columbia U. Press 1953) was "recognized throughout the civilized world as the definitive treatise on this subject."

He graduated from Haverford College in 1900 with an AB, then earned the AB from Harvard University in 1901. He attended University of Pennsylvania Law School and Harvard Law School, earning his LLB in 1904 from Penn. He began working for what became Drinker Biddle & Reath in 1904, becoming a partner in 1918.

He was a powerful Philadelphia lawyer who personified the elitism of the bar in the early twentieth century. As Chair of the ABA Committee on Professional Ethics he became a leading advocate of the Pennsylvania Preceptor Plan, a program designed to forbid lawyers from different ethnic backgrounds and lower social strata from admission to the bar.

Though he was a successful lawyer, Drinker spent every minute of his spare time playing music, a passionate hobby that was as important to him as his real profession. Apart from active music-making, he devoted himself to the translation of the German text of vocal compositions of great composers into English. Among them are Schubert's songs and Haydn's Creation, and a variety of works by Johann Sebastian Bach, among others, the Christmas Oratorio, the St. John Passion and the St. Matthew Passion. From 1912 to 1920, Drinker served as President of the Board of Managers of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

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