By John McKechnie AO, KC
There once was a young man who decided to make his fortune collecting pearls and shell out of Onslow.
Pearling was a dangerous and difficult trade, though it could pay well. So, our pearler engaged a man whose race were particularly adept at diving for the valuable pearl shell. Mr Ah Mat Siam, for that was his name, was an experienced diver.
For a time, the pearler and his diver worked amiably together, but one day they fell out.
So it was that the pearler first sued Mr Siam in the Onslow Magistrates Court. It ended badly for the pearler. He lost. Dr Thorp, the resident Magistrate, did not believe him.
Now this was a problem. He had other actions to pursue. The pearler came up with a crafty solution. In every other action, he subpoenaed a particular witness – the Magistrate, Dr Thorp.
But Dr Thorp proved equal to the task. He continued to sit in judgment on the actions brought by the pearler, undeterred by such a transparent device.
Throughout their squabble, Mr Siam had not been paid by the parsimonious pearler.
Mr Siam was no lawyer, nor did he hire one but utilised the provisions of a new piece of remedial legislation, the Pearling Act 1912.
So it was that on 9 October 1914, Mr Siam’s claim for £24 18s 6d for wages, 18s for sustenance, and £10 in lieu of notice came on for hearing before two judicial officers as required under the Pearling Act. Dr Thorp presided with a Justice of the Peace.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that a degree of animosity may have crept into the relations between the bench and the pearler.
The pearler suffered from a speech defect. Accordingly, he asked for an agent to assist him in court, articulating his defence. Well, Mr McKenzie’s friend hadn’t even been born yet, either in the flesh or in legal substance. The pearler’s request was refused.
However, Mr Siam had no similar difficulty in persuading the bench to allow the Onslow wharfinger, Mr Morgan, to prosecute the case on his behalf.
More was to come. The new-fangled Evidence Act was passed just eight years before and allowed the plaintiff to call the defendant to give evidence.
And this is just what Mr Siam did.
The pearler indignantly refused.
The bench was not amused and immediately committed the pearler to prison for 24 hours for contempt of court.
Tempers must have cooled somewhat because, after about 10 minutes, Dr Thorp went to the police station where the pearler was confined and withdrew the contempt charges.
So, the pearler came back to court and the case continued. Now the pearler admitted that he owed Mr Siam some £2 3s 4d, but that was all after he had deducted the cost of pearl shells misappropriated by Mr Siam.
The trouble was that the Magistrate had ruled against the pearler on this very point in earlier proceedings.
Undeterred, the pearler now played his trump card – yet again. He called the Magistrate to give evidence. This time, the Magistrate did not disappoint. He descended from the bench, leaving the Justice of the Peace in charge, demanded and received 1 guinea, the sum required to be proffered to a witness under subpoena and took the oath.
He was examined by the pearler. When that concluded, with the majesty that only a resident Magistrate can exude, he ascended again to the seat of judgment.
The parsimonious pearler lost. Badly.
And so it was that the whole messy business landed in the Full Court on 18 August 1915.
All day, the Court heard arguments from two leading counsel of the time.
At the end, in the words of the Daily News for that day:
In fact it was too much for their Honours to settle off hand so they decided to take time to talk it over and give their judgment later.
How much friendlier than ‘c. a. v’?
A week later, the Court spoke. It may have been alright for the Magistrate to go into the witness box, but it was definitely not okay for him to return to the bench.
Among other things, the Magistrate had made an order for witnesses to remain out of Court. So, he disobeyed his own order. There was no-one to rule on the admissibility of the evidence. If he refused to answer a question, could he compel himself to answer and, if he did not, commit himself for contempt?
So the pearler had a victory.
History does not record whether Mr Siam was ever paid, but perhaps there is a clue to the answer.
On the day the argument was held in the Full Court, 18 August 1915, the pearler quietly enlisted in the army and did not return to civilian life until 1919.
Both the pearler and the diver lived long lives. Mr Siam stayed in Onslow as a fisherman and died in 1955, at the age of 84. Mr Horace Lister Holmes, for that was the pearler’s name, married in 1928, moved to Claremont in 1936 and died in 1974, at the age of 83.
And the pearling industry in Onslow collapsed soon after the events in this tale, moving north to the more plentiful waters of Broome.
(Adapted from Ah Mat Siam v Holmes (1915) 17 WAR 197.)
