Legal Practice after World War II
When I retired from the management of Melbourne Truth, I returned permanently to my Chambers – in fact I had never quit them – and resolved never to practice for reward. I found myself besmirched by the suggestion that I had decided to be a philanthropist. Nothing of the kind; I had no wish to serve the public free of charge or to set up the equivalent of a free legal bureau, but as I had determined not to go back to court I realised that practising for reward would be almost impossible. I wished, too, to avoid the ultimate responsibility for litigation. Indicative of my present life is the fact that between the last sentence and this resumption of writing I have had two telephone calls from people, “Can they come to see me?” The nature of their business doesn’t matter, but I have always found it hard to say “No” to anyone who asks can he come to have a few words with me. In the result I suppose I can claim without any boasting that I have the largest and most unremunerative practice in this city.
I come to my Chambers about 9.30 each day and rarely leave before 6.00 p.m. and it’s usually hard for my secretary to fit in everyone who wishes to come in. I hear the usual sob stories from the wife whose husband is not so appreciative of her as he was during their engagement; I hear from husbands what mean creatures their wives have degenerated into. I meet racing people with problems, all sorts of people who have become involved in income tax investigations, and so on and so on. It’s a pleasure to help them with an initial interview which one hopes will also be the last. The difficulty is that one becomes enmeshed in their lives, and the work doesn’t end with the first or second interview.
I have not received any fees except on two occasions during the past twenty five years: once when I was prevailed upon to appear for some politicians before a Royal Commission and once comparatively recently when a solicitor friend, through a little carelessness, became involved in difficulty. Apart from that I have received no money from legal sources since the Second World War.
Others ask me how I have lived, knowing that I inherited no money. That question is not so easy to answer. I have been lucky in one or two investments. I dare not say “speculations” because my income tax friends might then start ransacking amongst my papers to ascertain whether my intention in embarking on a venture was to make a quick profit or whether it was a serious investment. I am sure that they will accept this statement as conclusive evidence that I never had any intention of making a quick profit, that I was always a very serious investor and if matters turned out so that I did manage to get a profit somewhat earlier than anticipated I am sure they will set this down to a lucky turn of the wheel.
Really my great good fortune related to shares in a proprietary company. My great friend Bill Braithwaite was killed on our last day in the line at Montbrehain and on my return to Australia I was urged by his family to put a few pounds into a little motor company. I had very few pounds nor did my family but we did take a few shares and for many years the company failed to prosper. Then with the growing popularity of the motor car the company bounded into prosperity, paid a number of tax-free dividends and generally became a first class investment. The company was Preston Motors, and it had commenced in a small garage in Preston.
The vicissitudes incidental to backing racehorses at times caused me to wish that the shares were negotiable on the Stock Exchange but they were not; and finally a few more of them passed into my hands from the family, not a great number. Just at the time when I should have been paying bitterly for my rather reckless and dangerous life, the proprietary company went public and the value of my shares multiplied some twenty five times. It was a strange happening, a most fortunate one for me. It provided me with what was to me a very large sum of money which I was able to use usefully. From then on I was never short of money.
Years and years ago I engaged in an adventure in sheep with one of my relatives by marriage. This finally caused me to take over a small acreage of land. I did not have enough money to clear it but a little was bought later and then a little more until finally a substantial acreage accumulated. All that I need add is that my original purchase was at £5 per acre of land then known as Misery Farm. Ten days ago the land adjoining it was sold (to my son) at $140 per acre.
Harry Jackman was not an intimate friend of mine, but I had known him for many years. He was anxious to become the tenant of the Blackburn Hotel, a derelict structure which the Licensing Court was threating to relicense. Harry suggested that I should join in the venture, but I had no wish to do this. I agreed, however, to examine the proposition. I then submitted an alternative. The tenancy appeared to me to offer few prospects but acquisition of the freehold did have possibilities. The owner had neither the means nor the desire to rebuild and, prompted by me, Harry negotiated a very easy contract – namely the payment of £1,000 deposit and the balance by instalments over a period. We added the proviso that if we rebuilt the hotel which obviously would necessitate borrowing, the balance due to
the vendor had to be relegated to a second mortgage.
As I did not have my share of the deposit, Harry had to provide it and allow me to pay him back over a period. The contract was signed and I then went to a prospective lender pointing out that we could rebuild the hotel for the sum of £6,000 but that I wanted a loan of £7,000 and was prepared to pay a little extra interest. He agreed to lend this sum. The hotel was then rebuilt for £6,000 and we paid the extra £1,000 to the vendor, reducing our liability to her to £4,000. I then waited on my Bank and stressed that I did not wish to have to go to the Brewery to finance the whole transaction without giving the Bank a chance to do so. The Bank agreed to pay off both the first and second mortgage and our two loans were accordingly consolidated.
Harry ran the hotel for a year or two. The district prospered and one day Percy Henry, the gentleman for whom I did my first licensing case, persuaded us to accept £32,000 with the right to retain certain neighbouring land. I felt that I was being lifted to the level of millionaire. I agreed to the sale, and later settled the £12,000 on my wife and my son; I felt that I would never know another poor day. I may mention that the next time the hotel changed hands it was for the round figure of £250,000.
I have never been careful in saving money and I have been careless in handling the actual bank-notes. I always liked to have a few hundred pounds on me. It gave me confidence. I suppose this feeling is not unknown to anyone who may read this.
On one occasion one of my horses had won some race or other and I had withdrawn £500 from the winnings to provide against an emergency. Present in my Chambers at the time were Bill Irvine, later Crown Prosecutor and son of Sir William, and Len Stretton, later a Judge of the County Court. Having bundled the notes into elastic bands, in the way in which I am so fond, I put them into one of the English Law Reports. A few weeks afterwards, having occasion to use the Reports, I found the notes missing. Determined not to give my friends the pleasure of showing concern I let another few weeks go by, but finally went to them and said that the joke had got a little stale and would they kindly tell me where the money was. Both of them were horrified and disclaimed having played any trick. Subsequently we had to go through the whole of the volumes of the English Law Reports; and as any legal reader knows, the volumes are numerous. We had quite a laborious task until we discovered them in the volume of another series.
On another occasion, while travelling abroad, I got a pleasing letter from a colleague saying he had borrowed a volume of my English Law Reports only to find £200 in notes fall out.
After I had won the Melbourne Stakes with John Wilkes, I had £1,200 in notes which I didn’t bother banking. Walking down the street I called in at the office of a stock-broker and said, ‘John would you mind putting this envelope away for me. I’ll get it sometime later when I need it’. John obliged. He was a charming man, incapable of theft or misapplication in the ordinary sense but he had gone out of his ordinary broking practice to recommend clients to invest in a gold mine. When the gold mine proved not to be a gold mine he was so distressed that he employed a considerable amount of the firm’s money in paying calls which he did not collect from his clients. Difficulties multiplied, of course, and the day of reckoning had to come; and one day I picked up The Herald to read that my poor friend had blocked up the windows and doors of his room and gassed himself. I was shocked by his death and I shrank from the task of enquiring about my £1,200 envelope. A few days later I called in at the office, spoke to a clerk who opened a tin box and handed me the envelope intact. The general discrepancy, of course, was substantial; and had my money gone into this Bank account there would have been no chance of recovering it. I always felt sorry for this poor man whose sad fate did not stem from any inherent dishonesty but from human weakness.