Of all Chief Justices in Australia in the 19th century, none so demeaned the office as did Sir Henry Wrenfordsley, second Chief Justice of Western Australia.

Moving from an indifferent practice as a Dublin solicitor to a very insecure career as an English barrister, Wrenfordsley won notice for his interest in Conservative politics, twice standing unsuccessfully for Parliament. An able public speaker and a companionable guest at gentlemen’s clubs, he obtained a colonial judicial appointment through patronage.

He served in Mauritius before being appointed Chief Justice of Western Australia and then Chief Justice of Fiji. He acted as a judge in Tasmania and Victoria and finally was Chief Justice of the Leeward Islands. In every office, he collided with colonial administrators and fellow lawyers and was in constant dispute with the Colonial Office.

A weak lawyer, he was ridiculed as a "journeyman judge" and a "gallery judge," who turned the court into a theatre. His public career was marked by every bad judicial quality-- incompetence, duplicity, interference in politics, laziness, uncontrollable temper, chronic insolvency, and overwhelming self-importance among them.

Table of Contents

Foreword - Professor Roy M Mersky
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
"Dramatis Personae"

CHAPTER 1: "I Entered the Colonial Service"
CHAPTER 2: A Short Tour of Mauritius
CHAPTER 3: Three Years in Western Australia
CHAPTER 4: "Thrown Away in Fiji"
CHAPTER 5: A Visit to Tasmania
CHAPTER 6: "A Journeyman Judge"
CHAPTER 7: "The Main Thing is to Get Rid of Him"

Abbreviations
Notes
Index

"One strong trait in Australian society, even today, continues to be the championing of the rogue, the scammer, the little guy trying to get every last bit of gravy from the train before it leaves the station. For this section of society, Wrenfordsley is your man. No act was too base, too mischievous, too conniving or unconscionable for Wrenfordsley to consider beneath him."

-- Jonathan Abandowitz, Law Society Journal NSW, August 2005, Vol 43 No 7

"Wrendfordsley is shown by Dr. Bennett to be a disgrace as a person, and even more so as a judge. Whereas with all the previous books that I have read on our early judges, I would shake my head and feel uncomfortable about how poorly they were treated, I became increasingly cross and frustrated at how such a political opportunist could have gone from one appointment to another, each time demonstrating the undesirable qualities... set out above.
Dr. Bennett has a special gift of bringing his subjects back to life. Whereas, previously, he has made little in the way of a judgment in relation to his characters, in this book, it seems to me that he holds a similar view to myself. But then again, as his copious references show, he researched Wrendfordsley in his usual detailed manner, thereby perhaps becoming a lot closer to him than even we, the reader of this book, become.
I strongly commend this book to all who share a love of the history of the legal profession. It makes compelling, if not frustrating reading, when one has to remember, that we are actually dealing with a true to life character, not one made up for television. I fear that such a damaged character would be, in fiction, regarded as too improbable to be realistic. Alas, if you read the book you will find that he was not."
-- BJM, Tasmanian Law Society Newsletter