William Bakewell and William Bartley, from Liverpool link, add quality to early South Australian legal system

Both entering law in Liverpool, England, William Bakewell (left) and his mentor William Bartley in the late 1840s formed an Adelaide law firm that became one of the largest and best conducted in South Australia at that time. They contributed to wider South Australia in political and government roles.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia

William Bakewell, and his mentor William Bartley, used their previous link in Liverpool, England, to bring quality to the early 19th Century South Australia legal system and make a wider contribution to the province in politics.

William Bartley, born in Liverpool, was admitted as an attorney of the King’s Bench at 19. He emigrated to Australia with his wife and their three children on the Lysander, arriving in South Australia in 1839, and immediately joined the practice of Charles Mann and Edward Castres Gwynne.

William Bartley, who also arrived in Adelaide in 1839 on the Fairfield, had been employed as a boy he was employed by solicitors Christian & Co. of Liverpool. He carried letters of recommendation from William Bartley that also gave him employment as a clerk, and later articled, in the office of Mann & Gwynne.

After Bakewell was admitted to the bar in Adelaide in 1848, he joined his mentor in the solicitors partnership of Bartley & Bakewell, that became one of the largest and best conducted in the city. The partnership was joined for a time by Randolph Isham Stow, later a South Australian supreme court justice. 

William Bartley was acting crown solicitor and advocate general for South Australia in 1849, with a seat on the Legislative Council for two months during the absence in Tasmania of William Smillie, son of Matthew Smillie, founder of the Adelaide Hills town of Nairne. After South Australia’s Real Property Act was passed in 1857, Bartley was appointed senior solicitor to the lands titles office, remaining there until he retired in 1881. As a public servant, he was barred from private practice and politics.

William Bakewell's first foray into public activity was in opposition to state aid to religion, acting as secretary of the Australasian National League.In 1857 Bakewell was appointed Barossa representative (1957-60) in the South Australia’s first House of Assembly, replacing Horace Dean, unseated on the grounds that he was an American citizen and had assumed a false name and false qualifications as a doctor.

Bakewell was later elected, with businessman Philip Santo, to the seat of East Adelaide. During his second parliamentary term, he steered the passing of what became known as Bakewell’s Act regulating the proceedings of joint stock companies. Bakewell made a second visit to England  in 1865 in connection with the famous Moonta Mines lawsuit, when he was senior counsel for the mines company. He made the first speech before the supreme court on the motion for the original writ of scire facias that led to an appeal to the privy council.

Back in South Australia, Bakewell was linked to a series of partnerships –  Bakewell & Scott, Hicks & Daly, Hanson & Hicks and then Bakewell, Daly & Price – until original members of these firms gave up their private practice for senior posts in the supreme court and the Real Property Office, leaving Bakewell as the sole operator.

In 1867, when judge William Wearing replaced Benjamin Boothy as third judge of the supreme court, Bakewell was appointed to the crown solicitor vacancy. He resigned due to ill health and died three weeks later. Bakewell was a member of the Congregational Church and a friend of minister Thomas Quinton Stow but his burial was conducted by the dean of Adelaide in a Church of England service.