Portrait of Judge Boothby

Portrait of Judge Boothby, 1803-1868, mounted in an enamelled frame forming a brooch, probably used as a mourning remembrance.

Benjamin Boothby was appointed second judge of the Supreme Court of South Australia in 1853. He was the last judge to be appointed in Britain by the Colonial Office. Despite his birth into a family of Yorkshire ironmongers and his own large family, he studied as a young man to become a lawyer. With his wife Maria and their children, Boothby settled in Adelaide at 'The Glen'. This is now the site of the Passionist monastery at Glen Osmond.

Boothby believed that South Australian colonial law, as well as the parliamentary system, had been devised with questionable authority. He continually put forward these views and also exerted undue influence on juries during court cases. His criticism included the locally devised Torrens Real Property Act. Following a parliamentary commission, he was finally removed from office by Governor Daly in 1867. He died the following year in the midst of an appeal against the decision.

Despite the enmity caused by his public behaviour, in private life, Boothby was apparently a devoted family man. His decision to move to South Australia was based on the need to provide for his fifteen children. The electorate of Boothby is named after his eldest son, William Boothby, Sheriff of South Australia for almost fifty years. William devised a system of secret ballot now used in Australia and various other parts of the world. The novelist and playwright, Guy Boothby, was a grandson of Judge Boothby.

The mourning brooch held in the Library's archival collections was probably created by an Adelaide jeweller using a photograph of Judge Boothby taken by the Adelaide Photographic Company a few years earlier. At the height of nineteenth century mourning practice, it was reasonably common for a widow or other grieving family member to wear a brooch containing a photograph of the deceased. This and other mourning practices were renewed during the First World War.