George Arnot Maxwell (30 April 1859 – 25 June 1935) was an Australian lawyer and politician. He was one of Melbourne's leading barristers, specialising in criminal law. He was also a member of the House of Representatives from 1917 until his death in 1935.
Early life
Maxwell was born in Montrose, Forfarshire, Scotland and educated in Fife. He migrated to Australia with his family in 1875. He worked briefly as a jackaroo and then completed his matriculation in Melbourne in 1881.[1]
He subsequently taught at Melbourne schools, including Caulfield Grammar School, while studying arts and law at the University of Melbourne, where from 1884 he was a student of Trinity College. His early training and experiences for his later career as a barrister and politician can be seen in his student activities. In July 1884, he was, along with Trinity student Ernest Selwyn Hughes, a founder of the Shakspeare [sic] Society at the University of Melbourne,[2] and he won the Sir Wigram Allen Prize for Oratory awarded by the Trinity College Dialectic Society in December the same year.[3] In 1889, Maxwell was appointed Prelector of the College's debating society.[4]
Barrister
Maxwell was admitted to the Victorian Bar in 1891 and developed a successful legal practice specialising in criminal law. He was eventually appointed King's Counsel (KC) in 1926. Arthur Dean regarded him as "beyond all question the greatest [Victorian] criminal advocate of modern times" and Robert Menzies described him as "the greatest criminal advocate I ever heard".[5]
One of Maxwell's most notable cases was the Gun Alley Murder trial of 1921, where he had Tom Brennan as his junior. His client Colin Campbell Ross was convicted of the murder of a 12-year-old girl and subsequently executed, in what came to be regarded as a miscarriage of justice.[6]
Maxwell married Jean Russell Ross in 1896—they had four daughters and one son. Maxwell lost sight in one eye in 1920 and most of the sight in the other in 1921, becoming totally blind in 1929. Following his death at home in the Melbourne suburb of Canterbury, his seat of Fawkner was won by future Prime Minister Harold Holt.[5]
