He was the son of Robert Pratt Furness of
Preston, Lancashire, a business agent for Pearson & Knowles Ltd., and his wife Margaret Rue, born in 1880. He was educated at
King William's College, becoming a solicitor. He worked for Rawsthorn, Ambler & Booth, in Preston. Furness moved to
British Honduras (now Belize) to practice in 1906. He served in
World War I, commanding the 1st British Honduras War Contingent of 129 Belizean men who sailed for Europe on HMT
Verdala on 4 November 1915; and then as an officer in the
British West Indies Regiment, in France and Egypt. He was
called to the bar at
Lincoln's Inn in 1919. Furness then held legal posts in
Tanganyika and
Trinidad and Tobago, where he was Solicitor-General. He was Chief Justice in Barbados from 1926 to 1936; then Chief Justice in Jamaica. He was knighted in 1929. He died in the Mandeville Nursing Home on 1 March 1959. ==Family==