Judging Boundaries: Justice Willis, Local Politics and Imperial Justice

Abstract

Justice John Walpole Willis arrived in Melbourne in March 1841 as its first Resident Judge. After just over two years he was removed from office by Governor Gipps and the Executive Council and returned to England to pursue justice through the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. His career exemplifies the colonial civil servants’ dilemma: ‘thinking globally’ by maintaining connections in the wider imperial circuit, but ‘acting locally’ by keeping boundaries in the local and interpersonal colonial sphere. The dismissal of Justice Willis reflects the tensions between colonial authority and politics and the broader transnational nature of imperial justice.

Notes

¹Catherine Hall, ‘Imperial Careering at Home: Harriet Martineau’, in Colonial Lives Across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. David Lambert and Alan Lester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 337.

²C. H. Currey, Sir Francis Forbes: The First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1968); J. M. Bennett, Sir James Dowling: Second Chief Justice of New South Wales 1837–1844 (Annandale, NSW: Federation Press, 2001); J. M. Bennett, Sir John Pedder: First Chief Justice of Tasmania 1824–1854 (Annandale, NSW: Federation Press, 2003); John Molony, An Architect of Freedom: John Hubert Plunkett in New South Wales 1832–1869 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1973); Peter A. Howell, ‘The Boothby Case’ (MA Thesis, University of Tasmania, 1965).

³Zoe Laidlaw, Colonial Connections 1815–1845: Patronage, the Information Revolutoin and Colonial Government (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2005); Alan Lester, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain (London: Routledge, 2001); Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830–1867 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

⁴Kirsten McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies: Sydney and Cape Town 1820–1850 (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2004).

⁵James Stephen to John Walpole Willis, 28 April 1837, John Walpole Willis against Sir George Gipps on Appeal against an Order of Amotion from the Office of a Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Australian Joint Copying Project (AJCP) M1587, Appendix to the case of the appellant xxvi, p. 79.

⁶Laidlaw, Colonial Connections.

⁷A. Lester, ‘British Settler Discourse and the Circuits of Empire’, History Workshop Journal, 54 (2002): 24–48.

⁸David Neal, The Rule of Law in a Penal Colony: Law and Power in Early New South Wales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 58.

⁹Cited in Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child: A History of Law in Australia (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1995), 82. An Unruly Child: A History of Law in Australia (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1995), 82.

¹⁰Peter Karsten, Between Law and Custom: ‘High’ and ‘Low’ Legal Cultures in the Lands of the British Diaspora – The United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, 1600–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 508.

¹¹McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies, 1.

¹²McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies, 84.

¹³Dowling to Gipps, 16 March 1840, Desp. 210, Annexure C I (ii), NSW Governor's Despatches Vol. 49, ML A1238, p. 140 (p. 24).

¹⁴Gipps to Russell, 3 January 1841, Desp. 7, Historical Records of Australia, Series 1 (HRA), xxi, p. 160.

¹⁵Writ of Supersedeas, 17 June 1843, Colonial Office, Original Correspondence: Secretary of State, NSW, 1842–1846, Judge Willis’ Suspension Part III, CO 201/378, p. 189.

¹⁶Howell, The Boothby Case’, xxvi.

¹⁷Howell, The Boothby Case’, xxvi. The act specifically uses the terms ‘amotion’ and ‘amoval’.

¹⁸Roger Therry, Reminiscences of Thirty Years’ Residence in New South Wales and Victoria, 1863 ed., Facsimile Edition (Sydney: Royal Australian Historical Society, 1974), 344.

¹⁹Gipps to Stanley, 19 July 1843, Desp. 114, HRA, Series I, xxiii, p. 47.

²⁰Gipps to Stanley, 19 July 1843, Desp. 114, HRA, Series I, xxiii, p. 50.

²¹Executive Council Minute, 21 December 1842, 42/28, Annexure A, NSW Governor's Despatches Vol. 49, ML A1238 p. 12 (p. 1); Executive Council Minute 13 June 1842, 43/10 and 15 June 1842, 43/11, CO 201/377, pp. 5, 51.

²²Executive Council Minute, 20 January 1843, 43/31, Annexure A, NSW Governor's Despatches, Vol. 49, ML A1238, p. 54 (p. 42).

²³Executive Council Minute, 20 January 1843, 43/31, Annexure A, NSW Governor's Despatches, Vol. 49, ML A1238, p. 54 (p. 42).

²⁴McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies, 52, 184.

²⁵Gipps to Stanley, 19 July 1843, Desp. 114, HRA, Series I, xxiii, p. 47.

²⁶P. A. Howell, The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council: Its Origins, Structure and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 186.

²⁷Justice Jeffcott, June 1843–December 1844; Justice Roger Therry, December 1844–February 1846; Justice William à Beckett appointed February 1846, made permanent October 1846 after the Privy Council appeal.

²⁸Willis erroneously passed a death sentence on a convict escapee named Manuel (aka Ferguson), but the sentence was overturned by the Sydney judges.

²⁹Chief Justice Dowling to Willis, 2 September 1840, Appendix C III (19), NSW Governor's Despatches 49, ML A1238, p. 460 (p. 343).

³⁰Edmund Finn, The Chronicles of Early Melbourne, 1835–1852: Historical, Anecdotal and Personal By Garryowen, Centennial edition (Melbourne: Fergusson and Mitchell, 1888), 66.

³¹Paul R. Mullaly, Crime in the Port Phillip District 1835–1851 (Melbourne: Hybrid Publishers, 2008), 23; John V. Barry, ‘Willis, John Walpole (1793–1877)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1967), 602–604.

³²B.A. Keon-Cohen, ‘John Walpole Willis: First Resident Judge in Victoria’, Melbourne University Law Review 8 (1971), 703.

³³John Walpole Willis against Sir George Gipps, AJCP M1587, The Case of Sir George Gipps, p. 21.

³⁴McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies, 66.

³⁵ Port Phillip Herald, 13 April 1841.

³⁶Gipps to Stanley, 18 May 1842, Desp. 93, HRA, Series I, xxii, p. 56.

³⁷Harold F. Behan, Mr. Justice J. W. Willis: With Particular Reference to His Period as First Resident Judge in Port Phillip, 1841–1843 (Melbourne: H.F. Behan, 1979), 87–91, 172–198.

³⁸Deas Thomson to Gipps, 17 May 1841, Superintendent, Port Phillip District, Inward Registered Correspondence VPRS 19, Box 15, 41/783; Gipps to Stanley, 2 July 1843, Desp. 105, HRA, Series I, xxiii, p. 4, enclosures at CO 201/377 p. 119 ff; Behan, Justice J. W. Willis, 84–86, 253–266.

³⁹The Port Phillip Gazette (PPG), edited by George Arden, was the most trenchant critic until it passed into more pro-Willis hands in November 1842, leaving George Cavenagh's Port Phillip Herald (PPH) as the main anti-Willis vehicle. The Port Phillip Patriot (PPP), proprietor John Fawkner, editor William Kerr, supported him throughout. Appendix N, NSW Governor's Despatches 49, ML A1238, p. 2067–2162 (pp. 1–92).

⁴⁰Gipps to Stanley, 2 July 1843, Desp. 103, HRA, Series I, xxiii, p. 3; Curr to Gipps, 5 June 1843, CO 201/377, p. 58.

⁴¹ PPP, 19 September 1842; PPP, 17 October 1842, PPG, 21 June 1843.

⁴² PPG, 3 June 1843; Finn, Chronicles of Early Melbourne, 79–81.

⁴³Paul de Serville, Port Phillip Gentlemen and Good Society in Melbourne Before the Gold Rushes (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1980), 58.

⁴⁴ PPH, 25 March 1842; Finn, Chronicles of Early Melbourne, 67.

⁴⁵Behan, Justice J. W. Willis, 1–40.

⁴⁶Simpson to La Trobe, 15 March 1842, Inward Registered Correspondence, VPRS 19, Box 50, 42/599; PPH, 11 February 1842; PPH, 4 February 1842.

⁴⁷Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class (London: Routledge, 1987); John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman, 2005); Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman, 2005); Serville, Port Phillip Gentlemen.

⁴⁸ PPH, 27 April 1844.

⁴⁹Willis to Derby, 16 November 1842, Derby Correspondence, 920 DER (13), 1/190/10, AJCP M2077.

⁵⁰Sir George Grey to Lyttleton, 20 July 1859, cited in John C. Bell, British Colonial Administration in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Policy-Making Process (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 199.

⁵¹Sir George Grey to Lyttleton, 20 July 1859, cited in John C. Bell, British Colonial Administration in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Policy-Making Process (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 45

⁵²Neal, The Rule of Law in a Penal Colony, 222, n. 58.

⁵³Order-In-Council, 1 August 1846, Enclosure 1.1, Earl Grey to Fitzroy, 3 October 1846, Desp. 37, HRA, Series I, xxv, p. 204.

⁵⁴Order-In-Council, 1 August 1846, Enclosure 1.1, Earl Grey to Fitzroy, 3 October 1846, Desp. 37, HRA, Series I, xxv, p. 204.

⁵⁵Deas Thomson to La Trobe, 20 May 1842, CO 210/377, p. 172; Willis to La Trobe, 20 September 1842, Annexure H, II Enclosure 8, NSW Governors Despatches, 49, ML A1238, p. 1674 (p. 108).

⁵⁶La Trobe to Deas Thompson, 15 June 1843, CO 201/377 p. 77; La Trobe to Deas Thompson, 29 May 1843, La Trobe Correspondence, H7419, box 74, folder 2, State Library of Victoria.

⁵⁷Therry, Reminiscences of Thirty Years’ Residence, 345.

⁵⁸Minute to J. W. Hope, 1 December 1843, on Gipps to Stanley, 22 July 1843, Desp. 117, CO 201/377, p. 299.

⁵⁹Willis to Savage, 10 October 1862, John Walpole Willis personal correspondence, MS 9788, folder 2, State Library of Victoria.