Son's shareholding casts conflict over Benjamin Boothby being judge in 1860s South Australia's big Moonta Mines case
Despite being deeply in debt, South Australian supreme court justice Benjamin Boothby tried to buy serveral large homes. He briefly leased the original Urrbrae House (at right) built for Robert Forsyth Macgeorge and later replaced by Peter Waite, also pictured. Boothby's debt raised conflict of interest questions when presiding over the 1860s case involving Moonta Mines when his son George was a shareholder.
Images courtesy State library of South Australia and Marion Well
The Moonta Mines court case in 1860s South Australia represented a whole widespread subtext behind supreme court justice Benjamin Boothby being removed from office in 1868.
Boothby, notorious for rejecting South Australia colonial laws and executive actions, was the judge in 1864 for the Moonta Mines case where the Mills syndicate accused Walter Watson Hughes and partners of fraud and deception over claims of owning what became the megarich Moonta (Tipara) copper find on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula.
All of Boothby’s substantive decisions in the case favoured the Moonta Mines current directors and their absolute right to control the mines and to distribute their rich profits. For two more years, his Moonta rulings were backed by South Australian supreme court and, on appeal, the privy council in London.
But behind Boothby’s decisions was a major conflict of interest. Yet, as research by Peter Moore concludes, “for several years, the movers and shakers in Adelaide’s corporate, financial and political life can have been in little doubt about the judge’s conflict of interest raised by the extent of his debts and the source of his extra-judicial income stream”.
The first mention of Boothby’s conflict was made in the South Australian Legislative by Thomas Elder who said the judge had been “relieved of his own debts” by his son George selling some of his shareholding in the Moonta Mines. Elder was a key player in the Moonta Mines from the start. Elder, Stirling & Co. were the lead financiers of the Moonta Mines with Elder chairman of directors and co-equal largest shareholder, and the driving force behind funding and developing the mines for 30 years.
Elders knew too well how George Boothby gained his shares. George had been a clerk in Elder’s company in 1860 when he tipped off Walter Hughes, owner of the Moonta mineral lands, that the actual discoverer, a shepherd, was blabbing about his discovery of copper ore. Hughes used the tip to ensure he won the claim over rival claimants.
Hughes and Elder then led forming the Moonta Mines in 1861 and Hughes rewarded George Boothby with five of the first issue of 400 shares. In 1862, that became 40 shares of the 3,200 shares on issue. George sold ten of them almost immediately. The judge’s bank manager recorded that the quarterly dividend payment on George’s remaining 30 shares earned just enough to cover his father/judge Benjamin's interest bills.
Benjamin Booth had financial troubles even before he left London for South Australia in 1853. By 1859, Boothby already had “a very old and troublesome debt” and by 1862 the bank had begun pressing hard for its "permanent reduction". Thus, through the decade after Boothby’s arrival in South Australia, only the bank stood between the judge and insolvency. The prospect of losing the Moonta Mines dividend income via his son was even more dire.
On top his being indebted to the Bank of South Australia, judge Boothby made at least four attempts to buy a major house property for his wife and their large family. He did manage to lease the original Urrbrae House and its land for years five years from 1854 starting at £300 a year. Three months later he surrendered the lease to Edward Stirling, a partner of Thomas Elder.
Two of Benjamin Boothby's property purchases ended up in the supreme court where his colleague, justice Charles Cooper, ruled against him. From late 1863, the bank was less troubled by the judge’s indebtedness and, in 1864, even made a small further concession. Alex Castles notes: “Matching the low points of his mounting indebtedness to the high points of the Moonta Mines Case, raised the spectre that he was also corrupt” .
Boothby wasn’t pursued for conflict of interest as a matter of law partly because the precedents were limited in quantity and quality. Ultimately, Peter Moore notes, “Boothby was removed from office by a mildly judicial species of legal proceedings in which the whole truth need never be mentioned.”