By Emeritus Professor Peter Handford
Perhaps the last thing Margie Eberle, Visitor Services and Collection Officer at the Old Court House Law Museum, expected to find when transcribing a book of pleading precedents in the Museum’s collection was a little cartoon.
Nestled between a declaration in slander and a prayer in foreclosure, the compiler had been inspired to draw this cartoon of a duck escaping from a dog, leaving a trail of feathers, adding underneath: “Why is this like an unsuccessful plaintiff who has employed say 3 QCs?”
It is not now possible to say what caused the compiler to draw this picture; it does not seem to be directly related to the pleadings that precede or follow it, and it does not seem to have been inspired by the facts of any particular case. But what can be said is that the compiler, Frederic Rudolph Barlee, was a man of many parts. The drawing gives an opportunity to recall someone who played an important part in the legal profession, and in particular in legal education, in Western Australia.
Fred Barlee was the nephew of Frederick Palgrave Barlee, who came to Western Australia in 1855 on being appointed Colonial Secretary by incoming governor Arthur Edward Kennedy, and retained that position until 1877. Fred was born in Melbourne in 1859 but moved to Sydney. He graduated from Sydney University with an MA and was admitted as a barrister in New South Wales in 1887. He came to Perth in 1896 and was admitted to practice in WA the following year. The book of pleadings, marked ‘Sydney NSW 1891-2’, dates from his years in New South Wales, although no details of his practice are known. However, he must have been a figure of some importance: as a press cutting pasted into the book records, in 1893 he chaired a meeting of the Articled Clerks Association which discussed the recently-enacted Married Women’s Property Act 1893 (NSW).
According to Sir John Lavan, Barlee, though qualified in WA, never practised here. He became associate to Mr Justice Stone, and was then made a magistrate, based in Northam. In 1905 he was appointed Supreme Court Librarian, a position he held until his death in 1941 at the age of 82.
This position enabled him to serve the profession in various different ways, notably in founding the journal The Magistrate in 1917; though nominally the journal of the Justices’ Association of Western Australia, it served as a general law journal throughout Barlee’s term as editor, which lasted until 1928. Even more important was the part Barlee played in legal education, in an era long before the foundation of the University of Western Australia Law School, when the only way of qualifying was by serving five years in articles and passing examinations set by the Barristers’ Board.
Year in and year out, Barlee was one of the examiners, and according to Sir John Lavan, “Fred used to have a large book in which he kept copies of all the examination papers over the years and the answers, [and] if you were in Fred’s good books he would let you have a look”. Barlee also regularly lectured to the articled clerks on various topics in their exam syllabus, and according to the notice of his death in the Daily News, coached many law students. In 1920 Barlee urged the establishment of a teaching Faculty of Law at UWA – at the same time as the University’s Professorial Board passed a resolution to this effect.
The drawing shows that Barlee had some artistic ability. He also wrote and edited books, such as Humorous Tales and Sketches of Colonial Life, published in Sydney in 1893, and composed verses and poetry, including First World War patriotic songs and a 1916 “rally” entitled “When Prussian Hun the signal gave the world in blood to drown”, and the later and perhaps more reflective 1937 collection “Fore”, Law, War and More: Verses and Translations. He also used his versifying talents for the benefit of law students, clearly believing that learning rhymes was the best way of memorising the facts of cases. Here for example is his summary of the leading case of Taylor v Caldwell on frustration in contract:
Mr Taylor had hired a hall for a term,
Mr Caldwell was glad to have let it;
But a fire took place, and the hall was destroyed,
Thus Taylor was unable to get it.
When he sued, said the Court, “Both the parties presumed
On the building’s continued existence,”
And avoided the contract – they both were excused
In despite of the plaintiff’s insistence.
These first appeared in collected form in Case-Law Verses: A Memoria Technica of Leading Cases for the Use of Students and Others (1908); selections appeared in The Magistrate from time to time, and by 1922 the journal was carrying an advertisement for a second edition, Legal Jingles and Case-Law Verses, available for six shillings.
The Museum has a copy of the original edition. This and Barlee’s book of precedents serve as a memorial to a man who played a notable part in legal education in Western Australia more than a century ago.
Should you have something in your possession that you believe is significant to Western Australia’s legal and social history and is worthy of consideration for accession into the Museum Collection, please contact the Museum Curator, Megan Shaw, at mshaw@lawsocietywa.asn.au.
