G. M. Paterson

George Mutlow Paterson was a British colonial lawyer who was Attorney-General of the Gold Coast from 1954 and Ghana's first Attorney-General after independence, until August 1957. He was born in St George's, Grenada, on 3 December 1906 and died on 24 January 1996.

He won a scholarship to St John's College, Cambridge, joined the Colonial Service in Nigeria in 1929 and was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1933. He served as a magistrate in Nigeria and Crown Counsel in Tanganyika, was wounded with the King's African Rifles in 1940, and became Solicitor-General of Tanganyika and Attorney-General of Sierra Leone.

He stayed on as Attorney-General into Kwame Nkrumah's first post-independence government, and was succeeded by Geoffrey Bing in August 1957. He went on to be Chief Justice of Northern Rhodesia, was knighted in 1959 and retired to Dorset.