Felons, Mutineers and Other Learned Friends

20/09/2007

Michael Slattery QC and representatives of the Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History held a�reception in the Boardroom yesterday to formally accept a copy of Felons, Mutineers and Other Learned Friends, a PhD thesis about the history of the Australian Bars.

The thesis, by Catherine Douglas, traces and compares the development of the Bar as an institution in the Australian colonies from 1788 until 1856. One of Catherine’s aims was to integrate the large body of secondary sources focused on the legal profession or an individual colony or a particular lawyer.�

Another of her aims is to ‘capture the excitement, passion and pathos encountered at every turn in reviewing the early history of the colonial advocates who played such a fundamental role in the foundation of the Australian colonies’.

A copy of Catherine's thesis is held in the Bar Library.

20 September 2007