The self-cashiered Mr. M'Connell, was succeeded by Mr. J. M. Seward, for many years favourably known as Chief Clerk in the department of the Master in Equity ; and M r . Verner unconditionally surrendering in April 1846, M r . Pohlman was recalled en permanence, and was sworn in on the 29th. On the 15th July, 1851, the Equity Mastership was affiliated A'ith the Insolvent Court, and Pohlman and Seward became Master and Clerk in addition to their other duties. M r . Pohlman held the combined offices for some time, when he was appointed Judge of the newly created County Court, where his long, laborious, and conscientious career was well-known and appreciated. T h e oldest Official Assignees were Messrs. Archibald Cunninghame, James Graham, Archibald M'Lachlan, and Edward Courtney. They were recompensed for their services by commission on the amount of realised assets. THE COURT OF REQUESTS.
This was a legal contrivance for the recovery of small debts, restricted to sums not exceeding ,£10. T h e first Commissioner was M r . E . J. Brewster, at a salary of £ 1 0 0 a year. T h e first Registrar was Mr. Richard Ocock, a solicitor, afterwards residing at Ballan, but finding that he could take his intellectual wares to a better market, bid the establishment good-bye, and was succeeded by a Mr. Kirkland, who, in turn, m a d e way for Mr. John Sealy Griffin, a doctor, w h o threw his physic to the dogs, and preferred the small Government billet with little to do, and but little pay in the beginning. T h e Court opened for thefirsttime at 8 a.m. on the 1st April, 1840, with a cause-list of sixty-two plaints. M r . Brewster held office for some eighteen months, w h e n he resigned. T h e second Commissioner was Mr. R e d m o n d Barry, w h o stuck to the place so long that it acquired the sobriquet of "Barry's Little-Go," and in course of years became one of the minor standing institutions of Melbourne. It was a good deal knocked about in finding quarters, for it was bundled out of the Police Office and hurried away from west to east, where it found temporary shelter in a building erected at the south-eastern corner of the Eastern Market Reserve, and long k n o w n as the Eastern Hill Watch-house. The exigencies of the times sent it whirling back again, towards the Occident, at the intersection of King and Bourke Streets, to the brick tumble-down, which did duty as a Supreme Court from 1841 to 1843, and here it squatted until March, 1846, when it was transferred to a superannuated billiard-room, a portion of the appurtenances of the L a m b Inn, a once fast weather-board hostelry, thrown together on the ground where Scott's Hotel now flourishes. T h e billiard-room was of brick construction erected at the west end of the wooden tavern (which was a little in from the street-way), abutting sideways on the public thoroughfare, the entrance at the end facing a small area in front of the main building. T h e room was approached by a few stone steps, and when the Court was in session, a stranger, the m o m e n t he got inside, was surprised with the h u m a n contrasts presented by the principal performers in this drama of real life. The centre-piece was the Commissioner at the other end of the room, perched above the c o m m o n herd, in forensic costume, a veritable gentleman in black, with his head wreathed in Chinese mourning, his bands and neck-cloth of glistening white, an unmistakable symptom, which demonstrated that, even then, the manual art of the laundress and the digital skill of the gofferer, had arrived at almost perfection ; and as for the wig it always looked as if just taken off the block of the perruquier,— not a wrinkle in the curls, not a single hair awry, and set with as m u c h precision in its position as if glued to a marblefigure-head.The Barry bust was on such occasions well worth seeing, and the more so, because underneath there was what might be denominated an actualfiery"Griffin" only for the crowning broad patch of baldness, which looked like a small, bare, blaze-girt islet—so red was Registrar Griffin's encircling hair, and so utterly hairless his largely developed pate. Like twin griffins of a different species, were posted near the bench two other individuals known as bailiffs, both of w h o m were as ugly as sin, though of different patterns of facial unattractiveness. O n e of them was as bluely red in the face as the gill of a turkey-cock, and the other with a countenance so peculiarly indescribable as to render it impossible to tell by his physiognomy from which of the primitive branches of the great h u m a n race he derived his descent. T h e red-faced official was in some respects the reverse of his colleague, because he was generally civil enough to the suitors; whilst the other was coarse always, and discourteous at most times. It is one of the paradoxes of h u m a n nature hard to be accounted for, that Commissioner Barry never had a good-looking fellow a m o n g his " Little-Go " followers. H e was himself a splendid specimen of
