Genders & Partners

The firm began in 1848 as Smart & Wilson. This was when South Australia was still a colony, (it did not become proclaimed as a State until 1901), and is the only state in Australia that did not begin as a convict colony.

In May 1837, the South Australian Governor had appointed a solicitor named Samuel Smart as the first Sheriff of South Australia. In early 1838 Smart returned to private practice, and in May of that year, Smart was shot and wounded by a convict named Magee. Following arrest and trial, Magee became the first hanging in the colony.

On the 31st October 1839, Thomas Wilson (1787-1863), was admitted as a solicitor of the recently-formed Supreme Court of South Australia . By that date, there were only five solicitors in the whole of South Australia . After practising on his own for a few years, he went into partnership with Samuel Smart, and formed the firm of Smart & Wilson in 1848.

Very near their law chambers in Stephens Place, Adelaide were the offices of Light, Finniss & Co., founded by Colonel William Light. Colonel Light, as the first Surveyor-General, had selected the site of Adelaide, but by this time had left the Government Service. Smart & Wilson acted as the solicitors for Colonel Light's firm.

In July 1917 Eustace Genders (1893 - 1946) was admitted to the bar and joined the firm, which was then known as Wilson & Genders (Samuel Smart having died some years earlier).

After the death of Thomas Wilson the firm was known as Genders, Wilson & Partners for most of the rest of that century, except for brief periods when the name changed to Genders, Wilson & Pellew or Genders, Wilson & Bray.

In 1994 the firm changed to its current name of Genders & Partners.

South Australia's First Hanging Went Wrong

Michael Magee was the first person to be publicly executed by hanging in South Australia His crime was to shoot at the Sheriff of Adelaide, Samuel Smart in March 1838. He did not kill Smart, but merely wounded him. Magee confessed to his crime and agreed that the death penalty was fitting. The colony's new Acting Judge Henry Jickling sentenced Magee to death by public hanging.

His execution took place on May 2 1838 in front of about 1000 people, at about the site of today's Adelaide Oval car park. It was the only Government-owned land available that had a suitable gum tree which could be used for a hanging. Magee was taken to the site in a horse-drawn cart, escorted by the entire military force of the colony - 16 marines and 10 mounted policemen.

He was seated on his own coffin with his hands tied loosely behind him. Sitting on the coffin with him was the hangman, wearing a mask (to avoid recognition, as was the custom for executioners throughout history) and disguised with padding under his clothes.

The police with their drawn cutlasses and the marines with their fixed bayonets drew alongside the cart to guide it into a temporary enclosure (something like a sheep pen) underneath the tree.

While the hangman adjusted the rope and greased it up and down with his fist, the crowd was addressed by the offender, who admitted his crime and approved the penalty, but he continued to deny that he was a runaway convict from NSW, as had been alleged at his trial. As soon as the cap was drawn over his face, the chaplain's prayers ended and the leading horses were whipped to draw the cart away. However, the horses moved slowly, and the offender merely slid from the cart instead of falling. His loose-fitting noose slipped underneath his chin. He hung in the air, crying-out in pain. To make matters worse, his arms and legs were so loosely pinioned that he was able to rase his hands and prevent himself from choking. In panic, apparently having lost the stomach for his grisly task, (and possibly to escape recognition and reprimand), the hangman galloped off on a nearby horse. In the crisis, no-one knew what to do. Some cried "cut him down", others, "shoot him". Women fainted and the Sheriff addressed the crowd as the offender twisted at the end of the rope. The hangman was escorted back by police to finish the job. The whole crowd then shrieked, as the hangman pulled the legs of the dying culprit and gradually choked him to death.

Henry Jickling

Born around 1800, left South Australia in 1861, date of death unknown. Henry Jickling is by far the most eccentric person who has sat on South Australia's Supreme Court. He was never appointed permanently, but he was the Province's only judge for the fifteen months between the death of Sir John Jeffcott and the arrival of Charles Cooper. He wore bright green glasses and his jacket and trousers were always too small. He could not see more than half a metre and, it seems, regularly reprimanded tree stumps for not having the manners to reply to his greeting or request for directions.

Jickling was an equity barrister in London and he had published, at 29 years old, a 600-page study, A Practical Treatise on the Analogy between the Legal and Equitable Estates and Modes of Alienation . He knew the Wakefields and, in the 1830s, became interested in the new proposed colony of South Australia. He had been one of the original applicants for the position of Judge, but was passed over for Sir John Jeffcott.

Jickling came to South Australia anyway, on board the Buffalo. After living for a few months in Advocate-General Charles Mann's tent in Glenelg and tutoring his children, he moved to the city when it was ready and in May 1837 was employed as a clerk to the bench of magistrates. Much to the horror of Mann, Governor Hindmarsh appointed Jickling as Acting Judge after Jeffcott was drowned . The Supreme Court during these first two years before Charles Cooper arrived held its irregular sessions in a wooden building somewhere in Victoria Square, which was still largely scrubland. Mann now became Jickling's bete noire. On several occasions when he appeared for the government, he would challenge Jickling's rulings, and Jickling, not cut out for confrontations, would hastily adjourn, bolt out of the court room and run down to Governor Hindmarsh.

Jickling was not suited for criminal cases. He had the unfortunate task in April 1838 of having to pronounce the province's first death sentence to a Mr Magee. According to one of the persons present, the Judge was in tears as he read out the sentence.

Jickling was reluctant to hold any more criminal sessions . But by December 1838 there were twenty prisoners awaiting trial, and by the time the court finally sat in February 1839, there were thirty-five . Despite the best efforts of the prosecution, every one of them was found not guilty. Charles Cooper arrived very soon after that and Henry Jickling turned to private practice, for a time in partnership with his old foe, Charles Mann . In 1849 he was appointed Master of the Supreme Court. His management of the court was appallingly bad and eventually in 1861 the Attorney General had to sack him. Now prematurely old and in poor health, Henry Jickling returned to England, and according to Ralph Hague " is heard of no more".