‘An atrocious crime’: perjury on trial in colonial Australia

Sentencing an aged pensioner to nearly six years imprisonment for perjury in 1910, the Victorian Chief Justice denounced a man 'as dangerous … as the law could contemplate'. The prisoner had procured a number of others to give false evidence in a civil suit for libel launched by an ex-politician against another still serving in the Commonwealth Parliament. The denunciation expressed judicial abhorrence of what judges regarded as a detestable crime, undermining the administration of justice. This first study of the historical prosecution and sentencing of perjury in Australia explores the characteristics of cases that were committed for trial in the Supreme Court in colonial Victoria. Those prosecuted, and sometimes convicted, included witnesses swearing to alibis in the course of trials for murder, women alleging sexual assault or suing for maintenance of a child, men and women seeking damages or redress in the civil courts over unpaid debts or angry words, and police frustrated by the failure to obtain convictions in sly grog cases. In addressing the prosecution of perjury in Australian colonial courts this article examines what was at stake when private citizens as well as public officials sought to punish those perceived as failing to tell the truth under oath.