In 1919, Congress created the senior status option for inferior court judges. Before that, a judge who reached the age of seventy with at least ten years of service as a federal judge was allowed to retire and receive a pension for the rest of his life; afterward, a judge who qualified for retirement could assume senior status. John Wesley Warrington became the first federal judge to exercise this option on October 6, 1919. At that time, Warrington had been on the bench for ten years and six months and was 75 years old.