Edward Williams (Victorian judge)

Sir Edward Eyre Williams (1813 – 30 April 1880) was an English-Australian lawyer, politician and judge. He was a nominated member of the Victorian Legislative Council and Solicitor-General of Victoria.

Williams was born in 1813 in England, to Burton Williams, a colonist from Trinidad, and his wife Jane; he was the couple's sixth son. In November 1833, after completing his education, Williams was called to the bar of the Inner Temple where he practised as a barrister. Williams married Jessie Gibbon, a minister's daughter, on 13 March 1841.

Williams decided to move to Australia, arriving with his wife in the Port Phillip District on 13 February 1842, where he initially planned to become a squatter. However, he soon abandoned this idea and joined the Melbourne bar on 30 March 1842, making his first court appearance the following month where he performed well.

In the 1840s, although there were a few other members, the Melbourne bar essentially consisted of Redmond Barry and William Stawell (both future judicial colleagues of Williams), along with Williams, Robert Pohlman and Archibald Cunninghame. Barry, Stawell, Williams, Pohlman, James Croke and Edward Brewster, all with either Irish or English educational and legal backgrounds, were something of "an informal Senior Common Room" in Melbourne in the 1840s, "dining and socialising together and generally supportive of their own brand of legal manners."

In May 1844 Williams was appointed to the Bourke District local council. He contributed to efforts to establish the Melbourne Hospital from 1845, and in 1847 was a member of its first management committee.

In 1848, Williams represented William Kerr, the proprietor of The Argus, in defence of a libel case brought by the mayor of Melbourne Henry Moor. Kerr lost the case, and the damages he had to pay pushed him into insolvency, forcing him to sell The Argus. Williams later represented Edward Wilson (who had bought The Argus from Kerr) and James Johnston against another libel suit brought by Moor. Moor won this case too, but was awarded only token damages of one farthing. In both cases, Moor was represented by William Stawell.

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