Mr Justice What’s-His-Name
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was a Village. I then became Pastor to the Slums of Inner Melbourne for eight years. I was then a Country Parson and a Teacher at a One Teacher Bush School out at Jackson Creek in Western Victoria and then for thirteen years, I was a Suburban Minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And now, for more than 20 years I’ve been Superintendent in Sydney of Wesley Mission, Australia’s largest church ministry.
I’ve told you stories of people in each of these places.
Tonight I want you to come with me into the heart of the city.
I had sought desperately for some help and guidance when I first became Superintendent to Wesley Mission. Early in 1979 I had approached Professor Alf Pollard of Macquarie University and asked him if he would sort out the financial mess.
I was impressed with Professor Pollard’s sharpness of mind, of the questions he asked me and of his genial spirit. Thanks to Professor Pollard we built good relationships with donors and corporations to support the work of Wesley Mission. He was a wonderful asset in this regard.
Professor Pollard had accepted my invitation to become the honorary secretary of Wesley Mission, and if he was going to be the secretary then he was determined that the work we did and our financial structures would be sound.
He said to me one day “It’s about time you met some of the chief executives from the big end of town. I’m going to organize a dozen or so luncheons at which I’ll invite about a dozen or so chief executives whom you should get to know. At the dinner I’ll give you a chance to do a sales pitch on the work of Wesley Mission and it’s up to you to get those fellows and their corporations on board.”
So once a month Alf at his own expense together with the support of Sir John Marks of Delfin Discount Pty Ltd, established a series of monthly luncheons. Professor Pollard and Sir John sent out invitations to a dozen high profile corporate leaders to attend a luncheon.
These luncheons each month became a fantastic opportunity for me to meet very significant business leaders.
After the normal chit chat and a delightful lunch there was a period of time when Professor Pollard would ask one or two of the leading business men to explain why they had been in the news recently, or to expand on some new big business venture they had undertaken, and then in the glow of several very positive reports introduced me with some area of our work for which we would need funds.
I became very adept over the next half dozen years at telling a different story on the life of Wesley Mission to the one they may have heard of in the past. It was unfortunately my experience to find that Wesley Mission was very much confined to a church within the Methodist denomination and very few people had either heard of us or wanted to support us. But by being larger than one denomination and indicating the support we gave to all people in need in the community regardless of their religious backgrounds I was able to present a picture of practical and competent service with imagination and flare.
After the luncheon I thanked everybody for their interest and indicated that I would be contacting them over the next week. I wrote to each businessman, thanked him for his attention and interest, and asked if I could pay a visit to indicate how they could help us at Wesley Mission.
Over the next half dozen years we targeted the top 500 companies and by the time we concluded this series of luncheons hosted by Professor Pollard we had over 200 of Australia’s largest and most significant companies making donations to Wesley Mission.
Sometimes the people attending these luncheons were not corporate executives but outstanding individuals from the community. There would be leading politicians, doctors, lawyers, judges, academics and so on and this introduced me to a wide sector of the significant community that is Sydney.
Incidentally since Professor Pollard ceased chairing those initial luncheons, I have taken over the responsibility of inviting people in my own right and ever since hundreds of leading Sydney business people have been guests at luncheons at which I explain the work of Wesley Mission, thanks those who have already supported us and also give them the opportunity to explain why they have supported us, and request those who are not currently our supporters to become actively engaged in supporting us.
It was at one of Alfs early luncheons that I came to know Mr What’s-His-Name Q.C. I don’t intend to use his name because he is still active in the courts of NSW and also Australia.
Mr. What’s-His-Name Q.C. was a striking figure of a man. Obviously a very competent barrister and one who’s name became a household word for some of the very dramatic trials in which he was the leading defence barrister.
The first time I met him he came in striped trousers with black waistcoat and coat directly from defending a case in the Supreme Court. He had a tall military bearing although I don’t know if he had seen any military service or not.
He asked intelligent questions and showed a wonderful sense of humour.
After I had finished speaking that day he asked me if I preached at all at Wesley Mission and I replied that I preached many times each week but always on a Sunday Night in the Lyceum Theatre and always in Wesley Chapel at lunchtime services. He showed quite an interest in what I was doing. He quizzed me a little further on my style of preaching and indicated that he was always interested in good public orators.
I thought no more of it until one Thursday lunchtime among a crowd of about 300 people in one of my lunchtime services in Wesley Chapel I noticed Mr What’s-His-Name QC sitting there. I remembered his name and greeted him warmly afterwards. He told me he enjoyed my presentation very much and would come again.
And so he did. Over a period of some months he came whenever he had a lunchtime break in the Supreme Court case, which at that time he was defending.
One day some months later he rang me and asked could he have a private appointment. I rather hoped that having been influenced by the evangelical fervour of my preaching that he wanted to speak about how he could become a Christian and join in the life of Wesley Mission. On the day appointed he came dressed as if he had just come from the court itself – again pinstriped trousers, black waistcoat and black suit coat.
He coughed nervously several times after I had asked him to be seated and then said “This is quite embarrassing really, quite embarrassing. I don’t know where to begin. It’s all so out of character and quite embarrassing.” He made this statement a number of times.
I tried to reassure him that I was a good friend and a confidential person and that if he’d like to tell me what was on his mind I would do anything I could to help. I thought he wanted to bring up the issue of his religious faith and was just embarrassed about talking about salvation and faith in Christ. What he said however was quite different.
“Well the fact of the matter is, – this is quite embarrassing to me – the fact of the matter is, I have to go to court. I’ve been charged with drink driving or to be more precise, driving when I had a blood alcohol level in the upper range. I was wondering – although I don’t want you to think that I want to impose upon our friendship at all – I was wondering if I could call you to the court as a character witness and to speak of your knowledge of me.”
I then remembered that at one of these luncheons when we had been present I noticed that he was very convivial over lunch and obviously helped himself to a third or fourth glass of wine. That dim memory encouraged me to ask him “Have you ever been convicted of drink driving previously?”
He looked at me with the same steely glare he must have given many prosecutors during a cross examination, “Well as a matter of fact, now that you have come to ask the question, – this is so embarrassing really – now that you have come to ask the question, the reason why I am so concerned about this matter is that this will be the third occasion on which I will have been convicted and I believe it will be a very shameful thing, a blot upon my character, a stain upon my name and my reputation in the city of Sydney, if this case is, as it is most likely to, be resulting in a conviction.”
I repeated to him “So this will your third conviction?” He said to me “It’s all so embarrassing really.”
He looked at me in such a pleading way that I am quite sure he knew that I would be pleased to go to court and to plead in his favour and to ask the magistrate conducting the case that this distinguished barrister be granted every leniency for his foolish behaviour.
I also knew how to prosecute a case.
Looking him steadily in the eye I replied, “No I will not go to court with you. I will be your friend and I will support you in court but I will not say a good word about your character or your behaviour. If you had stolen a garden hose from a neighbour or even backed your vehicle into a neighbour’s car, I would be willing to speak on your behalf most readily, but you are a persistent drink driver and an utter menace upon the roads. There are innocent women bringing their children home from dancing lessons who could be killed because of your drink driving. There are families who may be robbed of their father who is doing nothing more than driving home from work when you run into him. I will not defend a drunken driver, in fact if a magistrate asked me what I would do with you I would ask the magistrate to send you to jail and to order that you should undertake compulsory attendance at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I will arrange drug therapy for you or help you into a recovery programme, but I will never speak a word in favour of you getting a more lenient sentence or having your case dismissed.
If I had thrown a hand grenade at him it would not have had more impact than that little speech. He slunk back in his chair and looked an utterly defeated man.
Slowly he kept muttering, “It’s all so embarrassing, it’s all so embarrassing.”
I said to him, “I have recently started an Alcoholics Anonymous group meeting in our Wesley Restaurant. I will come with you today to that meeting and the best you could do is to tell the magistrate next week that you have already started on a programme of rehabilitation and you are attending AA meetings.”
He looked at me and said, “Do you think it would help?” I replied “You can answer that question for yourself – you know as a defence barrister it certainly won’t do any harm and maybe it will help change you.”
He agreed to come and so as soon as I had had a prayer with him asking for God’s forgiveness and for God’s strength to help him into a rehabilitation regime, I took him down to our first floor Wesley Restaurant where a group of men and women sat in a circle around tables having their lunch and talking to each other.
People coming into Wesley Restaurant then and even to this day, probably don’t know that that group of a dozen or so people speaking to each other is a regular meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. He sat rather nervously in the group and when the circle of speakers one after the other came to him he followed suit and said simply “My name is ‘so-and-so’” mentioning his Christian name only, and then after a long pause said “I am an alcoholic”. He then went on to say that this was his first meeting and he didn’t know what to do. The other members of the AA group were most encouraging and helpful and I, who do not qualify for membership of Alcoholics Anonymous, slowly backed out leaving my friend in the group.
I did go to court with him, not to give testimony to his fine character but simply to be there to support him. He was given a very heavy fine and his license was taken from him for eight months. In one of those very fortunate occasions there were no press present. That is quite remarkable really because in the main city court there are always one or two reporters who get tipped off – I presume the Clerk of Courts or someone working in their office – whenever any notable person has to come before a magistrate. On this occasion there were no reporters present and I guess someone just missed seeing his name on the list of offenders to come before the magistrate that morning.
It wasn’t easy for him to continue his work without his license but he continued coming to our Thursday Chapel in the City and to the lunchtime meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. As the years went by we became good friends. Then one day he came to see me again to thank me and to say that he had been totally dry and sober ever since that day I had confronted him in the office.
It wasn’t long after that that I read a small notice in the paper that indicated that he was now Mr Justice What’s-His-Name having been elevated to the bench.
In all the work amongst the homeless, derelict and alcoholic people connected with Wesley Mission, many people do not think that sometimes our real helpfulness is not just with the down and outs but also with up and outs.
Today we still see each other at a place where I occasionally have lunch and when we greet it is always with warmth and understanding that no one else in the group of people around would ever understand.
Wesley Mission has a ministry to people in need regardless of their social, economic or intellectual standing in the community.
The city of Sydney would grow to be one of the world’s great cities and Wesley Mission would grow to be one of the world’s great churches and I was privileged to spend each day in the heart of both.