Moreton Bay had been open for free settlement for eight years, and had a Police Magistrate in the august person of Captain John Clements Wickham, RN. In the absence of a higher court sitting at Brisbane, and indeed a serviceable gaol, those charged with indictable offences were shipped to Sydney for District and Supreme Court hearings, together with all of the witnesses.
In matters of the gravity of R -v- Fife (1848), the various constables, witnesses, indigenous witnesses, interpreters, medical officers sailed the roughly 590 miles to attend and give evidence, and then back. A capital case, and indeed one that has excited the imaginations of people ever since. It was expensive to conduct, but a man’s life was at stake.
Then there was the matter of R -v- Ayerst, Cummins, Walker & Walker (1849). This involved convict exiles from the Mount Stuart Elphinstone, the man who hired them, a cockatoo, a fairly respectable couple and rather a lot of alcohol-fuelled violence. The cockatoo died, and its owner Mrs Orr was the victim of an aggravated assault. The public purse holders were outraged when this motley group, and eleven witnesses, descended upon Sydney for the trial.
Mr. Thomas Ayerst, of Brisbane Water, and Henry Cummins, William Walker, and James Walker, pleaded Not Guilty to an indictment for an assault committed upon Janet Orr, in November last. They were defended by Mr. Holroyd.
It was proved by the witnesses for the prosecution that Cummins and the two Walkers were exiles, and had been hired by Mr. Ayerst from the Mount Stuart Elphinstone on her arrival at Moreton Bay. As they were passing through Brisbane, Cummins killed Mrs. Orr’s cockatoo; and, upon her attempting to give him in charge to the police, Mr. Ayerst rode up and ordered him and the other men to go on their road, and, as she strove to prevent them, he told the men to do their duty, which James Walker interpreted by knocking Mrs. Orr down.
The jury found Mr. Ayerst and James Walker guilty — the one was fined £10, the other sentenced to six months in Sydney. Cummins and William Walker were acquitted and discharged. [In this case, no less than eleven witnesses were brought up from Moreton Bay at an expense of between £40 and £50. It is high time that some alteration took place in the mode of administering justice. The magistrates ought to have decided this affair in their own district.] Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer (NSW: 1845 – 1860), Saturday 15 December 1849, page 2
The prayers of the readers of Bell’s Life, not to mention those of the Colonial treasury, were answered by the proclamation that Brisbane could become a place for the holding of a Circuit Court. Instead of dozens of Moreton Bay’s characters sailing down to bother the courts of the capital, a judge and his entourage would sail north a couple of times.
The Circuit Court did not open until May 1850, at which time Justice Therry opened proceedings with a little speech (6000 words), forecasting the day when Brisbane Town would become a capital, a trading port and a permanent home for higher Courts.
Moreton Bay and More 