Northcroft was born in
Hokitika, New Zealand. He attended
Auckland University College and began his law practice in
Hamilton. The same year he returned to New Zealand, resumed his law practice, and joined an
Auckland law firm in 1923. Also in 1935, Northcroft was appointed a judge of the
Supreme Court of New Zealand at
Christchurch, a superior trial court. After returning from Japan, he resumed sitting as a Supreme Court judge, and occasionally sat as a judge of the
New Zealand Court of Appeal. Northcroft died in Christchurch on 10 October 1953. The botanist and physician
Earle Northcroft was his cousin. After his death his papers went to the
Justice Erima Harvey Northcroft Tokyo War Crimes Trial Collection at the
University of Canterbury, which was added to the Asia Pacific regional section of the
UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2010. ==References==