Redmond Barry very nobly just held his gun in the air and fired away. But it sort of gives an insight into his character, I guess, and the fact that he would be involved in such an archaic thing as a jewel, but also this idea of honor.
I'm Jen Kelly from the Herald Son and this is in Black and White, a podcast about some of Australia's forgotten characters. So Redmond Barry is best remembered as the judge who sent Ned Kelly to the gallows. However, there's much more to the tale of the founding father of many of Melbourne's major institutions, from Melbourne University to the
State Library of Victoria. But as we'll hear today, Redmond Barry had no intention of making Melbourne his home when he set off from Ireland to Australia as a young lawyer with big ambitions. It was only when he became embroiled in a scandal en route to Australia that Melbourne became his plan. B tell us the story. We welcome back State Library Victoria Reference Librarian Andrew McConville.
Welcome back to the podcast, Andrew, Thanks very much.
Jen. It's so nice to be here again.
Now, Redmond Barry is certainly not exactly a forgotten character. So tell us, why have you chosen him for us to chat about today.
Well, I think he's certainly remembered mainly for presiding over the trial of Ned Kelly, and I think that's probably an underestimation of him, because really he made a massive contribution to Melbourne and the development of Melbourne as a great city, and I think too often that's sort of forgotten and overshadowed by his work as a judge and his work on that particularly famous trial.
So let's go back to the beginning. Tell us about his early life.
Well, he was Irish but Anglo Irish, so he was part of that upper class in Ireland who had I mean, he could trace his family back a long way Ireland, but they had originally come over, I think with William the Conqueror, so they had a long history in Ireland. But they were part of the landed gentry in Ireland. So in Ireland at that time, the basically the Irish Catholics owned you know, maybe a couple of percent of the land. Virtually all of the land was owned by
English or Irish. Many of whom were absentee land goods. But raben Berry's family had owned farming land there for generations and they basically survived on the rents paid by their tenants, so they weren't particularly affluent. They were part of the ruling class, but they weren't a particularly affluent family, but they were also a family that was did have land, so that made them ay in the upper upper levels
of that society. And he wasn't the first born son and basically the firstborn son would inherit the land, so as the third born son. While he did go to boarding school in England, there was a great tradition of joining the army. His father had been in the army and have retired to the farm, so it was thought that he would become an army officer. But when he graduated from school, there weren't many commissions around. Actually Europe
was actually pretty peaceful at that stage. It was after the Napoleonic Wars and before Crimea, so it was a period of peace, so there wasn't many commissions in the army. And he studied at Trinity College and did become a barrister and was admitted to the Irish bar in eighteen thirty eight, so that became his career.
And was he always quite intellectual as a young man.
Well, he was, but he was also I mean he was as a young man. He was apparently quite a good looking young man. He was always fairly interested in the amorous side of life, I've got to say, as we'll hear about a bit later. But he was also a good sportsman, and I guess growing up on a farm, he was a strong swimmer, he was a good horse rider,
and he did enjoy those pursuits. But he was also someone who was I guess quite intellectual and someone who did love the sort of classical education that traditionally had existed in England. So he was drawn to that and he did, over his life have a great commitment to I guess culture and to education.
And was he actually working as a barrister in Ireland or did he not need to work at that stage?
I was certainly needed to work, so he needed to make his own way in life. And as I say, they weren't a particularly affluent family, so it wasn't a really wealthy family where he could just live off the family money. So he did need to make his own way in life, and what he found was that there were a lot of lawyers in Ireland and not quite
so much work to keep them all busy. So fairly soon after he was admitted to the Irish Bar he did make the decision to emigrate to Australia, which was probably for someone like him, was an opportunity to come to a fairly fledgling British colony where there would be many more opportunities as I established a judicial system for lawyers, and for lawyers to go on and to be fully successful, perhaps become judges. So I think that was what was in his mind when he decided to emigrate.
So he just came out on his own, and he would have been what in his twenties by.
Then, exactly, Yes, I think he was twenty six when he came out to Australia, and as I say, that was about within a year really of graduating, and he did come out on his own. He was traveling in a bit of style. He was in the cabin class, so he had his own cabin, so certainly much different
to a lot of the people coming to Australia. But yes, so his idea was that he would go to Sydney, and he would have make himself known to the important people in Sydney and hopefully launch a successful judicial career.
Now I believe that he was involved in a bit of a scandal on his trip out to Australia. Can you tell us about that?
Yes, he certainly was. He did have a great eye for the ladies and was someone who did conduct a number of love affairs, and he was normally fairly discreet about that. But the journey to Melbourne to Sydney was four months, so it was a long time on the ship, and he did start an affair with a married woman on the ship, which was fairly hard to keep secret
and became common knowledge. The lady involved her husband had to remove from his cabin and put in a separate cabin, and Redmond Barry became persona non grata on the ship as this affair quite a flagrant affair that he didn't actually seize for the entire journey and didn't seem to worry too much about it. But yes, he did become very notorious on the ship and that didn't do him any favors when they landed in Sydney.
And how did this affect his career?
Prospects well, basically the various people that he thought he would be being introduced to and would impress, people like the governor and other important people. They heard about the affair before he had a chance to meet them, and he found that he in that sort of ruling class of New South Wales. He was not probably going to get ahead because his reputation was very poor because of his behavior on the ship, and so he fairly quickly made the decision that he would not say in Sydney,
he would head to Melbourne. And it was a very, very small and undistinguished Melbourne that he was heading to in eighteen thirty nine.
So can you give us a bit more of a description what Melbourne was like at that time?
Certainly? Yes. In fact, the famous journalist Edmund Finn, who wrote under the name Gary Owen and wrote a very famous book about early Melbourne called The Chronicles Early Chronicles of Melbourne, he has this great description of Melbourne in eighteen forty, just after Redmond Barry arrived. I mean at that time it was a town really just a settlement of only about three thousand people, so it was tiny.
And Gary Owen says that Melbourne in eighteen forty was certainly not a city and could hardly be called a town, nor did it even partake of the characteristics of a village or a hamlet. It was a kind of big settlement and groups pitched here and there, with houses, sheds and tents in clusters or scattered in ones and twos.
There were several brick built houses and a few weatherboard cottages with some though not much pretension to comfort, but the majority of the business or residential tenements were made up of colonial wattle and daub roofed with sheets of bark or coarse shingles. During winter, the streets were chains of water holes, and the traffic had to be suspended in places. So it was very much a frontier settlement and a lot lot different than it developed as the
gold Rush and many more people came in. So when Ribbon Barry arrived, it was very very early in the settlement of Melbourne and it was very much a frontier settlement.
It's hard to imagine how different that was from what Redmond Barry had left behind in Ireland.
Absolutely, and as I say, his expectations would have been going to Sydney, which again was not a you know, had been settled at that stage for almost fifty years, so it was much different to Melbourne, and it was quite established and it was sort of the powerful center
of the colonies in Australia. So he would have had no expectation of arriving in this dusty, little frontier village, but that's where he ended up, and in some ways that was fortuitous because he was able to become quite an influential person in this very very small fish bowl of a town.
So of course, by the time Redmond Barry has had to pay for his fair boy ship from Sydney to Melbourne, he's used up even more of his last money. So I imagine he was pretty brute by the time he's arrived in Melbourne.
Yes he was. He had a fairly difficult trip to Melbourn too, It was very rough seas and took them a while to get to port. But he certainly was never someone who was a particularly wealthy man, even later in his life, and someone who actively pursued wealth in the way that some of the other settlers did. But certainly he had some savings, but they went fairly quickly and so he did find work as a lawyer, but he wasn't you know, It was a very scrabble sort
of type of position that he had. He was making a little bit of a name for himself because partly there wasn't a lot of competition, but also there wasn't a huge amount of work, and he lived in very modest little cottage in Burke Street initially, and it wasn't really until Victoria became a separate colony that the sort of more affluent or higher paying jobs, more responsible jobs
came about. But one of the things that was notable in those early days was that he, unlike most of the European settlers, most of the colonial settlers, he did have great empathy for the Aboriginal people and he did represent them in various encounters with the law, both in times when they were victims of attack and also when they had been charged with European laws. And so while ultimately he wasn't able to do an enormous amount of good there, he certainly wasn't through want of trying. So
he did. He's a very interesting and different sort of person in that he had a lot of contradictions in his manner, but certainly he was someone who did have a much more empathy for the Aboriginals and did work very hard for them in a way that most of the other colonists didn't.
Now how did his career progress over the following years.
Well, as I say he, I mean one interesting point too that probably gives an interesting insight into his character and into the sort of wild West nature of Melbourne was that in eighteen forty one he was actually challenged to a duel for supposedly a derogdory comment he made about a chap called Petas Snodgrass. And so they met down on the foreshore near Albert Park and Peters Snodgrass had actually been in a couple of duels and had almost shot himself in the foot in the previous duel,
and he did this with rebend Bar too. He fired his gun into the ground accidentally, and so Redmond Burry very nobly just held his gun in the air and fired away. But it sort of gives an insight into his character, I guess, and the fact that he would be involved in such an archaic thing as a duel, but also this idea of honor. But yeah, for those the aden forties, really he worked as a lawyer. He fairly represent various cases. He was hoping to get a
higher position in the government as it was established. But really he probably came into his own as many people did after Aden fifty one, when firstly gold was discovered and also when Victoria became its own colony, and so the judicial process then was set up in Victoria where you had a Supreme Court, and at that point he became a Supreme Court judge, and that's where his career really took off and where he became a very influential person in Melbourne as Melbourne very very rapidly developed.
And Andrew, can you tell us about political views.
Well, he was, as I say, he'd come from a conservative, ruling class background and that never left him. He really, I mean, he was very much a man of the early nineteenth century and perhaps eighteenth century in terms of his attitudes, rather than the latter part of the nineteenth centuries. So obviously, after the American War of Independence and after the French Revolution the idea of democracy was taking hold.
He was certainly not a democrat. He at one stage did consider running for the Legislative Council in Victoria, but that was just as he was appointed as a judge. So he didn't go ahead with that, but he did publish his views in the paper, and one of the things that he was very strong on was that he said, I will resolutely oppose universal suffrage and vote by ballots.
So he had this idea of this benign ruling class that had the wisdom to provide good leadership to everybody, but that he certainly wasn't in favor of one well, one person, one vote, certainly wasn't in favor of women having the vote, but he certainly wasn't in favor of men having the vote either. So he wasn't a Democrat
in any way. He was very conservative in his political views, although, as I say, he was a man of contrast, So in some ways he could be quite radical in his representation for the Aboriginals and in some of the benevolent things he did for people. But as a judge and as his political views were very conservative.
We'll be back right after this short break to hear more about Redmond Barry's private life.
So stay with us.
Now let's talk about his private life. We talked earlier about his eye for the ladies. Was he like that throughout his life with a stringham of romances or did he get married.
Well, he didn't ever get married, and he probably he certainly had an eye for the ladies and had various affairs. It's hard to know much about them, really, He just cryptically mentions various women in his diaries. But his main, the main love of his life, in his main relationship was with an Irish woman, Louis a Barrow, who was actually married when he met her, and married when I think she bore several of his children. Her husband seemed
to just disappear. She was Irish, Catholic, and Irish of a more working class, certainly not having the same educational opportunities as Redmond Barry. Now. They remained in a relationship for the rest of Redmond Barry's life, and he always provided for her, and he acknowledged his children, but he also didn't ever live with her. They had houses nearby each other which he paid for. Also, later he purchased
several farms. Actually I think I live on one of his farms here in matt Waverley, though just in matt Waverley along High Street. But he purchased adjoining farms, one of which was sort of his and one was for always a Barrow. But mainly managed by their son. But so it was a little bit of a stranger, quite a controversial personal life in particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century, when there was a much more
i guess, straightened view of morality. So while and most people knew of his relationship, even though he didn't really publicize it. He didn't appear in public with Luisa Barrow really, but everybody knew that to an extent they were almost living together and they certainly were in a relationship that produced four children and a relationship that was maintained lifelong. But yeah, so it was sort of out of step with I guess the morality of Victorian or that Victorian era of colonial Victoria.
Now let's talk about Redmond Barry as a judge, because that's how he's best known. So is it fair to say that he had a reputation for being pretty harsh.
Well, he did, yes, I think from his point of view, his attitude was that the Australian colonies had started as a jail and he was concerned about crime. And then after the I think at the time of the gold Rush about eight and fifty eight and fifty one, there was about thirty people in jail, and then a year
later there was one thousand people in jail. So with the gold Rush, with the enormous increase in population, and also with even though convicts weren't transported to Victoria, a lot of escape convicts and also a lot of convicts who had served their time were obviously very attracted to Victoria.
And also where there's great wealth, there's obviously crime. So he was very harsh, and he felt that he was harsh because he wanted to take Melbourne away from being a wild frontier town to being a very cultured European style city. But generally was felt that he often his representation as a judge perhaps pushed duries to find people guilty, and he was quite harsh in his punishments, although ironically he presided over the trial of many of the Eureka
rebels and they were all found not guilty. One thing to point out, too, is that he wasn't making the judgments of guilt or not guilt that was made by a jury. So there were jury trials, but obviously the
judge has great influence in directing a jury. He was involved in the trial of some prisoners who murdered an overseer called John Price, who had been very violent overseer at Norfolk Island, and then he was in Melbourne overseeing prisoners who were kept in ships on Hobson's Bay at Williamstown and were in work gangs, and they had a complaint and he went down to speak to them about it and they surrounded him and when they dispersed, he'd actually been killed. And I think Redmond Barry had quite
a few of them those men hung. It was a letter of the law that capital punishment was punished by hanging. But yeah, he did have a reputation for being quite a stern judge and someone who tended to err on the side of punishment rather than rehabilitation.
Now, the most famous trial level tell us about the Ned Kelly trial in Redmond Barry's role in it.
Well, he's certainly most well known for that, and I think that's probably slightly unfair. I mean, I think if you read about it, and you read current lawyers accounts of the trial, they would find various areas where Redmond Barry, as the judge, was directing the jury in a way
that indicated that he decided ned was guilty beforehand. And look, I think it's fair to say that Ned had shot three policemen and rob Watson Banks, so he probably wasn't ever going to be fair not guilty, but the murder he was that they're originally charged with when he was for shooting one of the policeman's Stringy barck Creek. You know, the defense was really about whether he was acting in self defense. But even then, when you shoot policemen, I'm
not sure what case you have. But he did have a very experienced counsel, whereas the prosecutors were very experienced. But I think the main criticism of Redmond Barry was that he probably again was someone who tended to direct the jury in a way that made them push towards a guilt verdict. The other thing was that he did have the trial move from Beechworth, where generally it would have been held because that's where the crimes were committed
in that area. I mean, he had it moved to Melbourne where there would be a less sympathetic jury in Beechworth near Kelly probably got a pretty sympathetic jury, but again, I mean he was found guilty by a jury, not by the judge, and the penalty for a capital crime like that was death. So I think in a way it's quite unfair that that's the only or the main reason people remember him, and he is vilified for that. I'm not sure if that's completely fair.
Now, tell us about his significant contribution to Melbourne's cultural life over the decades.
Well, his main He did make massive contributions to the cultural and educational life of Melbourne, and he very strongly felt that he wanted to turn Melbourne the Melbourne he originally there's this tiny little village and he wanted to turn it into one of the world's great cities. And obviously the gold Rush brought the money into make great buildings. But he was pretty altruistic. He wasn't someone that pursued personal wealth in the way as I say that many
of his colleagues did. And he's most famous for being very key person in establishing the Melbourne University and also the well what we call now the State Library Victoria, which was then called the Melbourne Public Library. Both of the foundation stones for those were laid in Aden fifty four and the Melbourne University started classes the next year
and the library opened in Aden fifty six. Very grand buildings, I mean the library still has the beautiful Queen's Hall that was the original part of the library from Aden fifty six, so a very very grand building for quite a fledgling city. And his view of the library and the university. Even though the university started with a handful of students, he actually ensured that they had high quality
academics there. He wanted it to be a great university, so he bought in academics from Britain to be the first academics at the library, and he continued to push for very high quality and to attract high quality academics all the way out to Australia to ensure that Melbourne University became a great university, which it has become. And the same with the library. He was very keen for it to be a great library. He built the collection very carefully, but he also didn't want it to be
an exclusive library. So for someone who was basically a bit of a snob and a bit of an upper class snob, he did have this contrasting side to his character where he wanted a library for everyone. In fact, most unusually for that period, it was a library that if you're over fourteen and had clean hands, you're welcome
in the library, whoever you were. And his description of the library was that he wanted it to be a voluntary university of adults, all in bud alike, with a desire to advance the great cause of education, which may be said to begin in real earnest when men enter on the struggle of life and resort to a great emporium of learning, philosophy, of literature, science and art. And he was the chancellor of Melbourne University from its establishment
until his death. And he's a president of the Trustees of the Library, as I say, from when it was opened until his death as well, so they were enormously influential. But also he had other activities as well. He was helped to found the Athenaeum, which was so important as a mechanics institute and dated when he arrived actually from just before he arrived eight in thirty eight, but he
was a very great supporter of that. Also involved in the establishment of the Philharmonic Society, the Royal Society which is a scientific society of Victoria, and help with the Melbourne Hospital. He was also even involved with the Victorian Horticultural Society. As a farm boy, he was always interested in horticulture. So he very much was a huge figure in the development of the cultural educational life of Victoria.
It's interesting when you consider just how much influence he had in the early days of Melbourne. It makes me wonder how different the city might have been if not for him.
Well, yeah, that's true. I mean there were, you know, other people who were involved, but I think he was. I mean he was an autocrat, which is you know, pretty much his personality, but he actually had the drive to do it. He did and even with the library, I mean he was there, you know, dusting books and shelving books for the opening of the library. It wasn't like he did never get his hands dirty, and he really had a proprietorial feeling for the library. He would
come into the library almost every day. And really for a building built, you know, only a few years after Melbourne was just a shanty town, it is quite an extraordinary achievement. Really. I mean it's one of the very grand buildings. That first building that you come to in Swanson Street, magnificent Queens Hall, which has been refurbished. I mean that is a really grand, grand building and one of the first of those post Gold Rush grand buildings built in Melbourne, and so I mean he really had
a lot of drive. And as I say, I think what was really admirable was that it wasn't He obviously liked to be someone who was in charge, and he liked to be someone who was seen to be driving the culture and educational life of Melbourne. But the fact is he did do that. He didn't just act as a figurehead. He was their hands on and he worked incredibly hard for particularly the university and the library, but also for all those other institutions have promoted education and culture.
And it wasn't for his own purposes. He wasn't there just to cut the ribbon or just to take credit. I mean, he does deserve credit, and he did get credit, but he utterly deserves that because he put in an enormous amount of time, an enormous part of his life to that when other people have the same era as him were out speculating on land and trying to make as much money as they could. That was something. He
was never a particularly wealthy man. He really just had his you know, quite good sorry as a judge, but certainly you know, he was nowhere near as wealthy as some of the other early settlers of Melbourne became and he.
Is definitely remembered just mostly as the judge who presided over the ned Kelly trial. How would you prefer that MELBOURNI has remembered him.
Well, I'd prefer him to be remembered as a great father of Melbourne as a great city. I mean, really, the things that he did did establish Melbourne as much more than just you know, a town for trading and a town for you know, where people found gold and found wealth. Through that, I think he saw wealth has been important for establishing a great cultural and educational center
and I think he's certainly achieved that. So I think, you know, we really should think of him as been one of the key figures in the establishment of the Melbourne that we know now, those great institutions we have that are you know, world leading institutions. I mean, our State Library is about the fifth most visitor library in the world. Melbourne University is I think rated as the number one university in at and one of the great
universities of the world. So I think that is all down to the foresight and the really hard work and the vision and the selflessness really of Redmond Barry. So I think it is unfortunate that we only remember him as a fairly harsh judge who did preside out of the neck Kelly troll or be it. I'm not sure if never was ever going to be found not guilty.
He did commit quite a few crimes. But I think it is unfair that that is how he's remembered, because you should be remembered as a great father of Melbourne, and we should all be proud of our city, and that city is, to some extent is the responsibility of Redmond Barry some of the great things of that city.
And also even just if we go on and think of you know what an arts capital Melbourne is, and you know the cultural life of Melbourne, now, a lot of that stems from the establishment of that cultural life so very early in Melbourne's in Melbourne's existence.
Well, thank you so much for sharing his story with us today, Andrew.
Thanks very much. Jen, it's been a great pleasure.
Thanks for listening. This has been in Black and White, a podcast about some of Australia's forgotten characters, written and hosted by me Jen Kelly, edited by Nina Young and produced by John ty Burton. You can find all the stories and photos associated with our episodes at haroldsun dot com dot a slash ibaw. If you've enjoyed this podcast, we'd love you to leave a five star rating on Apple Podcasts. Even better, leave a review. Any comments or questions please email me at in black and white at
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