Author:
Title: Supreme Court, Sydney, New South Wales ... Report of the Trial The Bank of Australasia v. Thomas Chaplin Breillat, Chairman of the Bank of Australia.
Description: Sydney: printed by Kemp and Fairfax 1845. Largish octavo later (but old) cloth, original plain wrappers bound in; 96pp. Some spotting of the outer few pages. With the inscription of legal luminary W.J.V. Windeyer whose ancestor Richard Windeyer was head counsel for the defendant and won plaudits for his closing speech. ¶ A rare bit of Australian legal and banking history. The Bank of Australia got into trouble in 1843, due to the debt of Hughes and Hosking, and approached their fellow bank for a loan of some quarter of a million pounds to get them out of trouble - and incidentally pay an 8% dividend to their shareholders. They then decided not pay their debt on the basis that the borrowers had no authority to borrow on behalf of the bank. The result is too complicated for me to digest, it's enough to say that the conclusion of this report is modern in terms of narrative but doubtless standard in mercantile law.

Keywords: law banking history c19th Australia economics social sciences association