Career

He joined the Colonial Service and was Advocate General in Baghdad in 1920 and President of the Civil Courts in Basra in 1921. After serving as Attorney General of Zanzibar (1922), Uganda (1925) and Gold Coast (1928), Abrahams was appointed Chief Justice of Uganda in 1933 and Chief Justice of Tanganyika in 1934.^[3]

He then served as Chief Justice of Ceylon from 1936 to 1939 and was knighted in 1936. The most celebrated case he presided over was that of the Australian Mark Anthony Bracegirdle, whom the Governor of British Ceylon Sir Reginald Stubbs was attempting to have deported; the court ruled against the Governor. He was founder-president of the Medico-Legal Society of Ceylon. He was succeeded by John Curtois Howard, after the acting Francis Soertsz.^[4] He retired from the bench in 1939.

Sidney Abrahams chaired a Committee on the Administration of Justice in Nigeria. He was later Senior Legal Assistant to the Commonwealth Relations Office, and played a major role in the suspension of the People's Progressive Party Government of Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana (Guyana) in 1953.

He was elected president of the London Athletic Club.^{[citation needed]} Abrahams was the first Jew to hold the post.^{[citation needed]}

Abrahams was married to Ruth Bowman and they had two children, Valerie and Anthony Abrahams.^{[citation needed]}