Page 28 - Keeping the Peace

22 Keeping the Peace – A History of Honorary Justices in Victoria
Bail, Your Worship!
Apart from witnessing documents and sitting on the bench of the Court of Petty Sessions, one of the important functions of the office of JP was hearing bail applications. Any JP might be required to fix the amount of bail required for release from custody of an accused person, and leave the undertaking of bail to be entered into by another JP.
In practice, this entailed some rapid character assessment. For example, two men arrested in the 1920s during the Mildura picking season did not have the money for bail and so were given temporary board and lodging in the Mildura police cells. A local JP paid the fine on their behalf and they were released. Later, the
JP was surprised to open his mail and find a letter thanking him for the loan and enclosing repayment.40
However, having access to a JP who could hear bail may not always have been easy. In 1958, for example, Mr Clarey, Labour member for Melbourne, told the Legislative Assembly of his visit to Pentridge jail to provide bail for a prisoner, and although he claimed there were about 30 JPs within a stone’s throw of his office, he could not find a single one who could accompany him. He went on to point out that ‘most applicants merely desire to write “JP” after their names and do not wish to accept the responsibilities that normally accompany the position’.41
In 1936, another JP described his visit to the Russell Street police station on a Sunday afternoon on a matter of bail. ‘The outer office was unoccupied and the door of the inner office was closed against me, while an argument was in progress between a number of recently arrested men and the officer on duty. When I subsequently inquired if the bail form had been prepared . . . the constable asked me what I took him for and invited me to fill in the forms myself. The occupation of the surety, which I gave as ‘Gentleman’, was queried by the constable, but he seemed satisfied when I informed him that the citizen in question had no active occupation but was a man of some means, and was, at one time,
a member of the police force’.42
40 Horsham Times, 17 May 1921. 41 Victoria Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 24 September 1958, Government Printer, p. 549. 42 ‘The Justice of the Peace’, 10 June 1936, p. 7
Specimen Bail Documents, April 1960.
‘The Justice of the Peace’, April 1960.