appointed iii his place pending His Majesty's pleasure. A new Jndge-Advoeate, Mr. Richard Dore, arrived in the colony hi May 1798. He officiated in the niagistrates' as well as in the higher Civil and Ciiminal Courts. In the Supreme Court Library in Sydney is presented a small vellum-bound book which records many of Dore*B decisions in the petty sessions- The entries are sometimes strange. A man is charged
- with neglect of duty, and as it appeared that he was of an
indifferent character, the gaoler was ordered to give him twenty-live lashes and discharge him." Two women appear ; one, charged with '* cruelly beating the other with a glass bottle and cutting her head, pleading a provocation in mitigation, the magistrates recommended the parties ta withdraw, and accommodate the matter between them- selves." 24th Oct. 1798. — A convict was brought, cluirged
- on a violent suspicion of feloniously and privately stealing from Wis
Majesty's public stores in Sydney a cake of soup, anil secreting about hi* person ii^ order to take away the same. The aoap was produced, and proved to be of thb aame t|imiity ag that Ijelonging to the stores ; but as the act and fact of atealiug wa« not Butliciently establishe*! in law, the [fiaid was sentenced to receive tifty lashes and to be discharged, ith (order to return to his duty as a servaDt of the government." Another man is charged with *' embezzling some stone,, the property of governraent; but as there seemed some- thmg of rancour and malice in the accusation, the prisoner was ordered to work out an equal quantity of stone as that carried away," A woman was accused of stealing a flat- iron from a house (into which she had come on Siniday last under pretence of hghting a pipe) during Divine service, and the property having been found upon the prisoner, and no defence being set up, she was ordered to have an iron collar roimd her neck for a fortnight, and to sweep the gaol for a month from this day." Another woman, pleading inability to pay (the jurisdiction of the magistrates was limited to £10) on account of *' various misfortunes and illness which prevented her attending on Saturday last, it was ordered that the debt be paid in the next corn harvest/" On the 15th Sept. 1798 Dore and his brother magistrate Balmain sternly ordered the discharge of a prisoner arrested *' without a specific charge,*' and the gaoler was peremptorily commanded on no *' acc.oul ^WV
