John Jeffcott only lasts a few months in 1837: first to two South Australian judges to drown in the sea

Justice John Jeffcott drowned when a whaleboart capsized while he was waiting to board a ship at Encounter Bay,
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

South Australia's first judge, Justice John Jeffcott, only had a few months as head of the colony's fledgling judiciary. He drowned at the River Murray mouth on November 19, 1837. 

Jeffcott had been appointed the colony’s first judge in England in 1836 but, settling his affairs (he had been acquitted of a murder charge in 1834), meant he didn’t arrive in Adelaide, via Hobart, until April 1837.

Jeffcott “admitted three Englishmen to practise in the roles of barrister, solicitor and proctor” as a start to the South Australian justice structure.  At his first sitting of the criminal courts on May 13, 1837, he congratulated the colony for, unlike others, allowing trial by jury. The jury foreman was Colonel William Light. At its first hearing, the court admitted the public prosecutor as a practitioner to the court. Seven prisoners were presented for trial on charges of burglary, break and enter, and rioting.

Jeffcott left South Australia for Tasmania – to adjudicate on a dispute over whaling rights – in June 1837 and didn’t return until October when he started setting up the colony’s supreme court.

Dismayed at the “dreadful dissensions” in the colony between governor John Hindmarsh (supported by Jeffcott) and his opponents, Jeffcott was soon looking for a position elsewhere. He was given leave to go to Hobart Town to consult with the judges there on South Australian legal legal difficulties.

On November 19, heading for Hobart Town, Jeffcott was waiting to board his ship at Encounter Bay when the whaleboat he was in capsized, and he drowned at the River Murray mouth .

South Australia lost another judge to the sea in 1875. That’s the year Justice William Wearing, appointed to the supreme court in 1867, was sent to Northern Territory – then administered by South Australia – to conduct circuit sittings in Palmerston (now Darwin).

The sessions saw the trial of Ah Kim, a Chinese cook originally committed on theft charges, who was tried instead for committing an “unnatural offence” with another prisoner in the gaol lockup. His legal counsel was granted a trial by a jury including six fellow Chinese but Ah Kim was still convicted.

On the return journey to Adelaide, Justice Wearing was drowned when his ship the Gothenberg was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef.