Thomas Day (July 6, 1777 – March 1, 1855) was an American jurist, politician, editor, and author who served as the secretary of the state of Connecticut from 1810 to 1835. He was the author of many reports of cases argued and determined by the Supreme Court of Errors.
Early life and education
Day was born on July 6, 1777, in New Preston, Connecticut, to Rev. Jeremiah Day and his third wife Abigail (née Noble) Osborne Day. He was a descendant of Robert Day, one of the founders of Hartford, Connecticut. Day was tutored by Barzzilai Slosson and was instructed in Latin and Greek by his father and brother, Jeremiah. in 1793 he attended at the New Milford Academy. He graduated from Yale College in 1797 and studied law at Litchfield Law School. From September 1798 to September 1799, he was a tutor at Williams College. Day read law with Daniel Dewey. He was admitted to the bar in December 1799, and began practice in Hartford.
In 1821, Thomas Day was one of three legal scholars, along with Zephaniah Swift and Lemuel Whitman, that authored an omnibus act which is considered the first time an American legislature took measures to address abortion in statute form. It only restricted persons from taking, administering, or causing one to be administered, "any deadly poison, or other noxious and destructive substance" with intention to murder, or cause or procure "the miscarriage of any woman".
He also edited several English law journals, amounting all together to forty volumes, in which he introduced notices of American decisions, and also of later English cases. He was the first recording secretary and an original member of the Connecticut Historical Society, of which he was president from 1839 until his death. Yale Law School awarded an honorary Doctor of Law degree to Day in 1847.
Portrait
At least in 1878, a portrait of Thomas Day by Alexander Hamilton Emmons, an American painter of Norwich, Connecticut, made near the end of his life, adorned the walls of the rooms of the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford.