Page 7 - Keeping the Peace

A poster used to summon the miners to Bakery Hill, which led to the Eureka Stockade. wiki.prov.vic.gov.au
Victoria’s first JPs: 1830s to 1860s
During this period, the functions of JPs were shared with salaried Police Magistrates, later known as Stipendiary Magistrates. Police Magistrates investigated crimes, presided over trials and handed down sentences. This arrangement continued for over a hundred years. JPs were intended to be the voice of detached reason and judgement to complement the higher level of legal expertise provided by the Police Magistrate.
The first JP in Victoria was James Simpson, who presided over a dispute between Henry Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner along with a doctor and a stockbreeder.1 Simpson was appointed as ‘arbiter upon all disputes between individuals, excepting as might relate to land, with power to name two assistances to help him, if necessary’. He was granted ‘the power to inflict such fines as he might consider proportionate to any injury sustained’.2
The administration of justice was not tied to any one location. Captain William Lonsdale was appointed as a Police Magistrate and set about to create the legal machinery necessary to manage the unruly population. A Police Magistrate could hold a court wherever they chose until Captain Lonsdale established the first Court of Petty Sessions on the south side of Little Collins Street, between Spencer and King Streets in 1838. Its ‘walls were made of wattle and gum tree boughs, the roof of reeds, and the floor was bare earth.’ 3
With the rise in Victoria’s population following the gold rushes in the 1850s, the court system expanded rapidly.
The number of JPs distributed across the state reflected the pattern of Victoria’s population growth. In 1853, Dr Thomson’s Petty Sessions ‘Return to Address’ listed the names of all gentlemen in the Commission of the Peace residing in Victoria, the distance they live from
1 2
‘The Justice of the Peace’, 11 January 1937.
La Trobe University, Legal Studies Department, ‘Guilty Your Worship. A Study of Victoria’s Magistrates’ Courts’, 1980, pp. 6-7.
‘The Justice of the Peace’, 7 February, 1914.
3
Keeping the Peace – A History of Honorary Justices in Victoria 1