The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Holroyd, Hon. Edward Dundas
Holroyd, Hon. Edward Dundas, M.A., Puisne Judge, Victoria, second son of the late Edward Holroyd, of Wimbledon, Surrey, Senior Commissioner of the London Court of Bankruptcy, and grandson of Sir George Sowley Holroyd, the distinguished judge of the Court of King's Bench. He was born on Jan. 25th, 1828, and educated at Winchester School, where he entered as a commoner in 1841, and carried off in two consecutive years the Queen's gold medal for the best Latin-English prose essays. In 1846 he left Winchester and proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. as first class in classics in 1851, and took his M.A. degree in 1854. Having determined to embrace the legal profession, Mr. Justice Holroyd entered as a student at Gray's Inn in Nov. 1851, and was called to the bar in June 1855. For the next three years he practised with success, and also contributed to the press. But, having a fancy for colonial life, he decided to emigrate to Australia, arriving in Melbourne in 1859, in July of which year he was admitted to the Victorian bar, and to that of Tasmania in 1867. Judge Holroyd soon took a leading position at the Victorian bar in equity and mining cases, and in 1872 was offered the seat upon the bench rendered vacant by the retirement of the late Mr. Justice Williams. This, however, he declined, and continued to practise at the Equity Bar with constantly increasing success, being made Q.C. in 1879. In August 1881 he decided to accept the judgeship rendered vacant by the death of Mr. Wilberforce Stephen, and still retains his seat upon the Supreme Court bench of Victoria. Mr. Justice Holroyd married at Melbourne, in 1862, Anna Maria Hoyles, daughter of the late Henry Compton, of Totnes, Devon, and granddaughter of the Rev. T. Compton, sometime vicar of Paignton in that county.