Alfred Lutwyche

Justice Alfred James Peter Lutwyche (26 February 1810 – 12 June 1880) was the first judge of the Supreme Court Bench of Queensland.

Lutwyche was the eldest son of John Lutwyche, of a Worcestershire family, who removed to London and started as a leather merchant, under the firm of Lutwyche & George, in Skinner Street, Snow Hill. Lutwyche was educated at Charterhouse School and at the Queen's College, Oxford, where he matriculated in 1828 and graduated B.A. in 1832, and subsequently M.A. While still at university, he had decided to pursue a career in law and became a student at the Middle Temple in London. After working in the legal areas of conveyancing and special pleadings, Lutwyche was called to the bar in May 1840. As a barrister, he went on the Oxford circuit. While he built up his practice as a barrister, he also supplemented his income and acquired some journalistic experience as a colleague of Charles Dickens, on the Morning Chronicle.

Suffering poor health, Lutwyche decided to immigrate to Australia. In 1853, he embarked in London on the Meridian bound for Melbourne. The ship was wrecked on the Island of Amsterdam in the southern Indian Ocean. It was a miracle that almost all on board (apart from the captain, the cook and one passenger) survived. At the wreck site, they were faced with a 200-foot lava cliff, which the sailors scaled and then hauled up the passengers. The ship broke up before any provisions could be gathered, but they were able to catch fish, which enabled them to survive for 12 days before Captain Isaac Ludlow of the American whaler Monmouth found them and took them to Mauritius. Lutwyche then travelled on the Emma Colvin to Melbourne, arriving in December 1853.

Having entered the New South Wales Legislative Council, he was Solicitor-General in the first Charles Cowper Ministry from September to October 1856, and represented the Government in the Upper House. He was again Solicitor-General in the second Cowper Administration from September 1857 to November 1858, when he succeeded Mr. (afterwards Sir) James Martin as Attorney-General. This post he resigned in February 1859.

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