Not too many High Court judges have fought duels but Irish-born Australian Redmond Barry did so four months after his call to the Victorian bar.
His adversary, the pastoralist Peter Snodgrass, had already survived one duel, courtesy of opponent Willie Ryrie. In 1841, after a quarrel in the Melbourne Club, Snodgrass, firing prematurely, shot himself in the foot. Generously, Ryrie then discharged his pistol in the air.
Later that year Barry upset Snodgrass by writing derogatory comments in a letter to a friend. The friend showed the letter to Snodgrass and it was pistols at dawn again.
Snodgrass arrived first and Barry kept him waiting before turning up in what was described as an outfit for a fashionable wedding – strap trousers, swallow coat and bell topper. Again Snodgrass could not contain himself and fired before the order was given. He missed and decently Barry shot into the air. Snodgrass had had enough dueling and became a member of parliament.
In 1840 Barry had not been able to find work at an overcrowded Irish Bar and sailed for Sydney. Unfortunately he was ruined before he arrived. He had an affair with a married fellow passenger and was confined to his cabin. The captain reported the matter to the Bishop of Sydney and Barry was obliged to move to Melbourne where he became an unpaid, unofficial standing counsel for Aboriginal people.
In 1851 he was appointed solicitor-general and then to the bench. Regarded as a harsh but generally fair judge, his most famous trial was that of Ned Kelly. Sentencing the bushranger folk hero to death, Barry added the traditional: ‘May God have mercy on your soul.’ Kelly replied, ‘I will go a little further than that and say I will see you there when I go.’ On 23 November 1880, 12 days after Kelly’s hanging, Barry died from ‘a congestion of the lungs and a carbuncle in the neck’.
He is remembered as the founder of the University of Melbourne and also the Melbourne Public Library, at which he worked stacking the shelves.
James Morton is a writer and former criminal defence solicitor
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