Geelong Lawyers' Collection: Thomas Charles Harwood
Biography of Thomas Charles Harwood (1825-1912)
The earliest original documents held in the Geelong Lawyers Colletion in the Special Collection section of Deakin
University Library are T.C. Harwood’s certificates of his admission to the English courts as attorney and solicitor
in 1846. They include certificates of his admission as an attorney of :-
1. Court of Common Pleas, a court of record dealing with civil disputes between subject and subject. The certificate is dated
9/6/1846;
2. Court of Queens Bench, historically the court held in the presence of the monarch, but ultimately one of the superior courts of common law in civil matters with
supervisory jurisdiction over inferior courts, magistrates and civil corporations by prerogative writs, and the principal court of criminal jurisdiction in England. The certificate is dated
9/6/1846;
3. Court of Exchequer. As its name implies, collecting revenue and adjudicating disputes concerning public revenue, were its original functions but over the centuries since 1200 when it first had a separate entity its jurisdiction was widened to include common law and equity cases between subject and subject. The certificate is dated 10/6/1846;
4. Bankruptcy Courts dated 22/7/1846;
5. Certificate of his enrolment as a solicitor the High Court of Chancery. It is signed by Baron
Langdale, Master of the Rolls. who certified the court’s requirements had been met.
Under the Judicature Act 1873 the superior Courts were amalgamated into the Supreme Court of Judicature consisting of the Court of Appeal and the High Court of Justice.
The previous courts emanated from the Curia Regis or King’s Court established after the Norman Conquest of England in the eleventh century.
When he made application for admission to these various courts as attorney or solicitor
T.C. Harwood produced a certificate of examiners under the seal of the Law Society of the United Kingdom in pursuance of rules made by the three common law courts in Easter Term 1846. The major part of the examiners actually present and
conducting the examination testified that he was fit and capable to act as an attorney of the courts. Given in Trinity Term 1846 its date is 5/6/1846.
The Solicitors Act 1843 had tightened up the requirements of admission as attorney or solicitor. Harwood’s certificates of admission were granted under the provision of that legislation.
The courts had always controlled the right of persons to practice in those capacities and although an Act of 1729 provided for service under articles and for examinations to be conducted by the judges as to fitness and capacity little more than questioning as to character and service under articles took place. Standards deteriorated and the term “attorney’ became one of contempt.
When Charles Dickens pilloried Dodson and Fogg, attorneys, of Freeman’s Chambers, Cornhill in Pickwick Papers he captured a common view.
To bring up standards and improve reputation, lectures on branches of the common law, equity and conveyancing were commenced by the Law Society in 1833.
Rules of Court requiring applicants to pass examinations conducted by the Society were passed in 1836 but it was the 1843 Act which gave power to the judges to make regulations for the conduct of the examination.
By 1846 judges and the Master of the Rolls had made regulations confirming the requirement for examinations.
It was Langdale as a member of the House of Lords who was the principal author of the Acts amending the law in relation to attorneys and solicitors.
Harwood was born in London in 1825 the son of Charles Harwood. His address on his admission certificates is Preston Cottage Lower Norwood, Surrey. In 1848, at London, he married Mary Ann Audrey
Stockwell. They migrated to Australia arriving at Melbourne Port Phillip District on the “William Stevenson” on 10th November 1850.
In James Hendy’s reminiscences he recalls Harwood working as a fellow clerk for Solicitor, J.A.Gregory
(1814-1887) in 1852 along with George King, a relative of Gregory . King was admitted to practice in Victoria in April 1852. Gregory had arrived in 1848 and set up practice in Market Square in 1849.
Hendy, who had worked for solicitors in the United Kingdom, was being paid 2 pounds a week as a copying clerk, a figure he accepted because he was desperate.
It was not enough to pay rent and keep house. Perhaps Harwood was not getting much more even though he had been admitted to practice in Victoria in June 1851.
Harwood helped Hendy gain some capital. Hendy had brought out with him pillow lace for sale on consignment from a
neighbour. Mrs Harwood sold it to her friends gaining him 3 pounds profit.
Their employment in Gregory’s office in 1852 must have been before they joined the general rush to
Ballarat. Gold was discovered in July 1851 but it was in September when the Cavanagh brothers arrived back in Geelong from Ballarat with 60lb(27.22kilograms) of gold that the exodus from the town began in earnest.
Hendy and Harwood were both at the Diggings at Ballarat. While there Harwood had made the acquaintance of a Mr
McClement, a builder, who held a 14 year lease of land in Ryrie Street on which he had erected a two-story weatherboard building which he offered to sell for 1,100 pounds.
Harwood told Hendy that if he purchased the lease he would take 2 rooms upstairs at 100 pounds a year as he was about to start his own practice.
Although he was entitled to do so Harwood had not ventured into practice straight after admission to practice in Victoria. His visit to the goldfields must have been sufficiently financially successful for him to venture on his own or he may have immediately realised that with greater prosperity likely to come he could chance his luck another way by hanging out his shingle as solicitors before and after him, including the writer of this biography, have done.
Hendy went ahead with the proposal and one can infer from Hendy’s account that Harwood commenced business on that site.
The ground floor was let to the Colonial Government for use as County Court offices on 1st March 1853.
Hendy set up his businesses of labour and land agencies in the building. According to Proeschel’s 1855 map of Geelong and Suburbs James Hendy’s premises were at 22 Ryrie Street East.
Numbers ran east from Moorabool Street.
The Geelong Advertiser reported on 4/6/1853 that Harwood and Edward Sandford had entered into partnership on 1/6/1853.
A Government map of Geelong 1854 shows an almost completely built on section of Yarrow
(Yarra) Street on the east side between Malop and Little Malop Street opposite Market Square. These buildings became known as Solicitors Row. One of them was the building erected by Charles
Sladen after his arrival in Geelong in 1842. He referred to it as his cottage.
When he first came he lived there and it was where he commenced his legal practice.
Sladen’s cottage, was used by him as an office, and by solicitors Martyr and
Taylor in the same way after they purchased Sladen’s practice on 8th July 1854.
Proeschel listed on the margin of his map business names and the streets where each business was conducted.
Martyr and Taylor’s address is given as Market Square and next on the list is Sandford and Harwood.
Sandford had been there since the end of 1852.
Edward Sandford (1823-1907) was admitted in New South Wales in 1847, 5 years after his arrival from the United Kingdom.
He took over the practice of Joseph Belcher (1784-1865) on 4th October 1854, although he was not admitted to practice in Victoria until December that year.
Belcher left his legal practice in Dublin in 1842 to join some members of his family already in the Port Phillip District.
He commenced legal practice in Melbourne. In about 1847 he came to Geelong, conducted his practice from a house where he lived at first and then in a two story building in Yarra Street next to Sladen’s cottage.
At the end of 1852 he decided to give up his practice and return to Ireland.
He was then 68. Sandford moved into the building after taking over Belcher’s practice.
The building became the place where Harwood continued to practice with a number of partners over a long life.
A point of interest is that the premises were purchased in 1912 by Joseph Belcher’s grandson Charles
Belcher, presumably from his father’s estate. He found that Joseph Belcher’s papers were still stored there.
The Sandford and Harwood partnership would have been financially successful. In her memoirs, Joseph Belcher’s daughter, Marcella von
Steiglitz. said father did very well in Geelong. Harwood engaged Snell and
Kawerau, architects, to design a brick cottage and on 3/12/1853 they called tenders for the building of “Hawthorne” Skene Street Newtown.
He must have decided he needed a larger home because tenders for additions were called on 24/1/1854.
The house, double storied, and substantial, with little alteration to the original design, is currently used as St Mary’s Hostel.
Harwood’s previous employer J.A. Gregory and his partner George Staveley were the solicitors for the Geelong Corporation.
When that partnership was dissolved in 1854 the Town Council gave the appointment to Sandford and Harwood.
Sandford resigned as solicitor for the corporation on 21.5.1856. Thereafter, Harwood and his firm, in its various manifestations, continued to act for Geelong and other Councils in the Geelong region.
Apart from municipal work, with the effect of the sudden increase of wealth in Victoria, legal business, like all others increased and charges went up.
William Kelly in “Life in Victoria” recalls his arrival in 1853 and seeing a pasteboard on a tent at Emerald Hill (South Melbourne) with a name of a friend he knew from Ireland,
"Solicitor, Proctor, and Conveyancer of Chancery Lane Melbourne . His friend told him he was sure he had come to Victoria at a good juncture, when solicitors were scarce, business brisk and money plentiful.
An ordinary criminal case was worth a year’s income.” On his appointment in 1852 as a Supreme Court Judge Redmond Barry had a salary of 1000 pounds a year but
solicitor T.T. a` Beckett, who had arrived the same year as Harwood was able to save over 20,000 pounds over 4 or 5 years from his practice after gold was discovered.
Barristers were able to earn eight times Barry’s salary.
With the finding of gold at Ballarat the population of Geelong increased. In 1851 it had been just over 8000.
By 1854 it was 20,000. Its merchants, bankers and professional men provided goods and services for locals and 30,000 in its hinterlands to the north and west.
In his book “Light Blue Down Under” Weston Bate describes the increased commercial activity in Geelong and the benefit to traders, importers brewers and flour millers while at the apex of society, lawyers, bankers and doctors were lifted to unexpected affluence by the general prosperity.
There were other solicitors in Geelong in opposition to Sandford and Harwood and Martyr and Taylor.
Lane and Stavely at 70 Yarra Street, Robert Vincent Market Square, H.R. Combe,
Garrett and Doyle, and George King all in Ryrie Street, Edward Manby, Union Street and
J.D.Symes, Kardinia Street are all shown in the margin of Proeschel’s map. Manby had worked for Sandford and Harwood before his admission in1854.
Edward Sandford left Geelong in 1857 to take up a new partnership in Melbourne.
When he practised in London Harwood had as his clerk, Charles Alfred Woolley (
1831-1910). Harwood and Woolley must have kept in touch as Woolley came out to Victoria to join Harwood in his practice in 1858.
Woolley was admitted as an attorney of the Court of Queens Bench on 2nd May 1856.
He practised as solicitor and attorney in England until he left in 1858. He and his wife set sail on the “Agincourt” on the 13th
March and arrived at Port Phillip on 9th June 1858. He was admitted soon after arrival and joined T.C.Harwood as partner in
Geelong. The firm was known as Woolley and Harwood. Although no documents have been found to that effect it may be safe to assume from the name of the new partnership that Woolley had bought out Sanford’s share in the partnership.
In the same year he became a partner with Harwood, Woolley gave Articles of Clerkship to John Mark
Davies(1840-1919). Davies completed the articles and was admitted to practice in 1863.
He practised briefly in Geelong for a time as partner with Woolley and Harwood in the firm Woolley Harwood and Davies.
Charles Woolley returned to England in 1865. Harwood then practised on his own. Woolley and Harwood kept up their friendly relationship by correspondence and by meeting together again when Harwood made a trip to England in 1903.
In 1863 Woolley had taken on another articled clerk, Frederic Rupert Pincott
(1846-1920). When Woolley left the partnership the Articles were assigned to Harwood.
Pincott was admitted to practice in September 1868 and, presumably remained in the employ of Harwood after that until 1872 when Harwood admitted him as a partner.
The firm then became Harwood and Pincott. Pincott had married one of Harwood’s daughters, Amelia, in 1871.
On 1/5/1893 T.C.Harwood’s son Harold Alexander Harwood (1865-1912) was admitted as a partner and the firm became known as Harwood, Son and Pincott but later reverted to Harwood and
Pincott.
Harwood and Pincott continued their business next door to the earlier and well regarded firm of Taylor Buckland and Gates.
Because of the wealth brought to Victoria by the discovery of gold Melbourne became Marvellous Melbourne but Geelong did not progress to the same extent.
Harwood’s neighbours had taken the step of establishing a Melbourne office as well as a local one with T. H.
Taylor and C. E. Gates in Melbourne and S.V. Buckland and J.H.Grey in Geelong.
This step may have brought about unimagined consequences to the firm and its clients.
Taylor died in 1884 aged 66. Buckland died 1886 aged 55 and Gates in 1898 aged
56. By 1899 it was clear there was a deficiency of at least 22,000 pounds in the trust account.
Grey was later charged with fraud and imprisoned. As the sole remaining partner he sold the practice to Harwood and Pincott on 19th April 1899.
A copy of the sale agreement and subsequent partnership agreements with new partners who had been solicitors employed in the firm of Taylor Buckland and Gates are held in the Geelong Lawyers
archives box of Harwood and Pincott.
T. C. Harwood retired from practice in 1902, aged 77. At a by-election in July 1899 he had been elected to the Victorian Legislative Council for the South West Province.
He had stood unsuccessfully on behalf of the conservative interests for election of the Legislative Assembly in 1883 and 1886.
He remained the member for the South West Province until his death on 30/4/1912.
He became unofficial leader of the House and Chairman of Committees. In its obituary of him the Geelong Advertiser said he was regular in attendance, took a keen interest in debates and voiced his opinion forcibly and fluently.
Whatever was the nature of the training he had under the Articles he served in England and the Law Society lectures he attended before admission Harwood obviously had a good grasp of legal principles, acting for at least 40 years as solicitor for the Geelong municipality and other local municipalities.
The firm also gave the opportunity for others to gain legal qualifications by granting Articles and many Geelong lawyers qualified by that opportunity.
From 1857 he was a member of the Geelong Grammar School Board of Management/Council and frequently its chairman.
He was solicitor for the school. At the time of the Schools Jubilee in 1907 he was chairman of the council but resigned in 1909 following a change of the constitution and the election of a non-Anglican, Donald McKinnon, a Presbyterian.
There is a memorial to him on the reredos in the school’s chapel of All Saints at
Corio.
The Chancellor of the Anglican Diocese of Geelong, a member of Synod and a vestryman of Christ Church he had a keen knowledge of Church Law.
In 1907 there was controversy at Christ Church concerning the incumbent, Canon Nash and division among the congregation.
According to his obituary Harwood stood up for constitutional government in the church, criticised the tactics of the”Nashites” and with his knowledge of Church law had their election declared invalid.
Harwood’s legal work would have included a lot of property and estate matters but he appeared in court and reported law cases in the Supreme Court show his firm for acting litigants. He was said to be well read with a wide interest in literature.
Thomas Harwood and his family lived at “Hawthorne” Skene Street Newtown.
He and Mary had 12 children of whom 6 survived him. A visit to the Harwood graves at Geelong Eastern Cemetery is a sad reminder of the heartbreaks parents in the 19th Century must have suffered when so many of their family died as children.
Joseph Charles died 22nd January, 1858 aged 6 years 5 months, Herbert Francis Newnan died on Easter Monday 1858 aged 14 months and 17 days, Walter Arthur died 16th March 1862 aged 22 months.
A daughter, Charlotte Emma, died 16th March 1869, aged 22 years.
After his first wife’s death in 1901, Harwood married Maria Barlow in London in 1904. He died at home on 29th April 1912 survived by his second wife and six of his children.
Because Thomas Harwood died so long ago it is difficult to get an idea of his character except for an analysis of his actions and any record of what his views were.
It seems clear that he was able, ready to take an opportunity when it came, kept long friendships, forthright in his dealings and conservative in his political views.
His speech at an Old Colonists’ dinner held in 1879 reveals much of his character.
Other speakers spoke of times past, present prosperity and need for further progress.
He said he hoped a scheme would be devised that evening to let old colonists put their hands in their pockets for helping the poorer early pioneers.
They should remember that when they were pioneers they were all dependent on one another and if they recollected that he would be sure they would all be better colonists.
One of the documents held in the Geelong Lawyers Collection is a brief from Harwood and Pincott in Geelong to Harwood and Pusey solicitors in London about the copyright of a Geelong client.
There are references to cablegrams between a partner in Geelong, D.F. Griffiths, and Mr
Pusey. Does this mean that the legal practice in Harwood established in London between his admission to legal practice in June 1846 and emigration in the second half of 1850 was continued and that Pusey retained the name Harwood or was there another member of the family in legal practice in London while C. T. Harwood was here?
Vivian Hill July 2001.
References
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Investigator Magazine. Vol 18, L.Huddle re “Hawthorne”. Vol 36, re Old Colonists’ Dinner, Vol. 16 James Hendy’s story.
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Geelong Historical
Society.
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Geelong Advertiser
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Morrow Index.
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Geelong Historical Record Centre
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Biographical Register of State Legislature to 1900.
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Thompson & Serle V.G.P.
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D. Wight Research notes 1991.
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Victoria and its Metropolis. A. Sutherland. McCarron Bird & Co.1888
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The History of Geelong and Corio Bay. W. Brownhill.
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Geelong Advertiser.
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The Land Boomers. M. Cannon. M.U.P.
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Life in Victoria. William Kelly. Lowden.
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The Golden Age. G.Serle. M.U.P.
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Shipping Arrivals & Departures1846-1855. M.A.Syme. Roebuck.
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A history of Harwood & Pincott. R.Annois. manuscript
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Concise Law Dictionary. P.G.Osborn. Sweet & Maxwell.
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Halsbury’s Laws of England. 3rd Edition Vol 36 .Butterworth & Co
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Everyman’s Encyclopaedia 4th Edition. Dent
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The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Charles Dickens. Chapaman & Hall
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Redmond Barry. Ann Galbally. M.U.P.
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Light blue down under. The History of Geelong Grammar school. Weston Bate. Oxford University Press.
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Geelong Grammarians. Corfield & Collins Persse. G.G.S.
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Christ Church, Geelong 1843-1983. James Grant
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Dictionary of National Biography. Smith Elder & Co. 1908
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Documents held in Geelong Lawyers Archive Special Collection Deakin University Library Waterfront campus.
In re Grey 1 and 2
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Victorian Law Reports 26
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Buckland v. Ibbotson Victorian Law Reports 1903.
Copyright Vivian Hill 2055 Portarlington Road Drysdale 3222 July 2001.
Bibliography by Vivian Hill
Text copyright held by Vivian Hill
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