Historical information

Library Committee minutes from 1920 discuss the placing of an Honour Board in the Library, there was obviously some discussion from the Ballarat and Bendigo Law Associations about whom should be placed on the board and whether it was appropriate that it be located in the library. The board was donated by the Committee of Counsel, from the Bar and so only commemorates barristers. It is curious that this was not placed in Selborne Chambers where many barristers had rooms including one of the men on the Board (Higgins). This board joined the much bigger LIV memorial board that celebrates all Victorian lawyers who served during WWI.

Significance

While memorial boards are a common addition to many public and civic building after World War One. This memorial board is the only one that commemorates members of the Bar, in that sense it is of great significance to the legal community. Two of the men commemorated on the board were sons of judges (Higgins, son of the Justice Henry Bourne Higgins of the High Court and Hodges, son of Justice Henry Hodges of the Supreme Court). Franc Carse was related by marriage to the a’Beckett family (also judges of the Court) and his father in law was on the Supreme Court Library committee in 1914. Eric Connelly and Murdoch Mackay shared rooms in Selborne Chambers. Connelly died in late 1918 in France, a member of General Pompey Elliott’s staff. Connelly had previously taken part in the Gallipoli landings in April 1915. Mackay served at Gallipoli and died in France in 1916, he was Major, but only 25 at the time of his death.

Physical description

brass and wood, black lettering.

Inscriptions & markings

Honor Roll in memory of members of the Bar of Victoria who fell in the Great War 1914-1918, Franc Samuel Carse, Eric Winfield Connelly, Mervyn Bourne Higgins, Edward Norman Hodges, Murdoch Nish Mackay, Erected by their fellow members of the Bar of Victoria