Honorary Secretary of the Melbourne Hospital. Hinton was, for a short time, in partnership with Mr. John Duerdin w h o soon got quit of him, and, associated with a Mr. John Trenchard, T h e batch of Attorneys w h o attended the commanded a long run of profitable business. Police Court were a very mixed lot, and there were some queerish worthies amongst them, the most prominent being Robert Scott, J. W . Thurlow, and John Plaistow. Scott was a tall, strapping fellow, with unmistakable beery indications about the nose and eyes. In his sober m o o d he was fluent in address, and was reputedly the master of extensive legal knowledge. I have seen him, and one or two others, in such a state of inebriety as to be scarcely able to address the Bench. They would be sometimes peremptorily ordered to sit down, or leave the place; and more than once cases were postponed to give the practitioner time to partially recover himself. Of the more modern Attorneys of the olden time, Messrs. J. M . Smith, F. Stephen, and H . J. Chambers are the most mentionable, and they are all still alive (1888.) fn re Joseph W . Belcher, I have been favoured by a surviving relative with this m e m o :—" H e came from Dublin in the first voyage of the 'Eagle,' in 1842. H e had erected a neat villa, which he named after the Irish 'Tinehinch' in the bend of the Yarra, at the end of Simpson's Road, on the left hand from Melbourne. Following his profession in Melbourne until July, 1846, he removed to Geelong, where he built a residence known as ' Sunville,' which was afterwards sold by his son to the once well-known Dean Hayes, and is n o w the Geelong R o m a n Catholic Convent. Returning to Ireland in 1853, he died at Rostrevor, in his 84th year, on the 14th December, 1865." T w o sons remained after him in Victoria, both of them colonists held in high esteem, viz.—Mr. W . R. Belcher, the most efficient clerk the Melbourne Police Court ever had, who died a Police Magistrate, at Port Albert, 8th October, 1873 ; and the other the H o n . G. F. Belcher for many years connected with the Treasury at Melbourne and Geelong, and m e m b e r of the Legislative Council. Mr. G. S. W . H o m e , whose brother was a Supreme Court Judge in Tasmania, did a fairly well-paying business for some years. H e even found his way into the Legislative Asembly, and oncefilledthe office of Commissioner of Public Works. CROSSING THE GARDEN WALL.
It was the fortune (or misfortune) of two or three of the wedded Attorneys to be blessed (or otherwise) with winsome wives, and these Graces were occasionally the conscious cause of bringing trouble to the domestic hearth. In one notable instance, which formed an item of the c o m m o n gossip of the time, circumstances were evolved which nearly eventuated in a terrible tragedy, and did eventuate in the summary punishment of the wrong man. A fast young lawyer contracted an intimacy with the wife of an Attorney residing in a cottage villa, near the terminus of one of Melbourne's principal streets, then sparsely occupied, but now one of the busiest spots of metropolitan commerce. T h e attachment at length became so confirmed that little doubt existed of its progress beyond the line where the proprieties end and their opposites commence. Though, as often happens in such cases, the husband was one of the last persons to hear of what had long passed the bounds offlirtation.H e woke, at length, to a consciousness of the existence of a state of things which should be discontinued ; but his marital remonstrances were scornfully disregarded, and the errant lady showed no disposition of amendment. At length, the indiscretions were hastening to a crisis, and circumstances had come to the knowledge of the husband which induced him to take measures to stop the goings on. There was no such absolute evidence as would sustain an appeal for legal redress, and as to a duel, there were strong reasons, personal and otherwise, to prevent such an open appeal to arms. O n the villa grounds was a cosy brick-walled garden, one side of which abutted on the street, and the surmounting of this enclosure was as nothing to the supple limbs and lithe form of the D o n Juan, by no means " a youth of sixteen." Nestled against the trunk of a large fruit tree in the garden's centre was a small summer-house, and here, at appointed hours on certain nights, long after sunset, the darker the night the better, the D o n n a Julia and her admirer used to hold assignations, a fact of which the husband was made aware, whether through the treachery of an Abigail, or how else, was a secret, and so he resolved upon sure and deadly vengeance. Though adverse to the duello, he was a capital shot, and securing the
