Paris Nesbit

Paris Nesbit, QC (8 August 1852 – 31 March 1927), born Edward Pariss Nesbit, was an Australian lawyer.

Nesbit was born at Angaston in South Australia to schoolmaster Edward Planta Nesbit and Ann, née Pariss. He was a cousin of the English writer Edith Nesbit. His mother died when he was two. Something of a child prodigy, by the age of ten Nesbit could speak German, French and Latin, and had translated the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller into English.

Nesbit attended Rev. Gustav Rechner's school at Light's Pass and M. P. F. Basedow's grammar school at Tanunda, topping the scholarship examinations for South Australia; he also studied music with Carl Linger. In 1868, having worked briefly in a bank, he was articled as a clerk to Rupert Ingleby, QC. He formed the Articled Clerks' Debating Society with Charles Kingston and edited the organisation's journals; his political views developed in a progressive vein.

Nesbit was called to the Bar in 1873 and embarked on a successful career in the courts. He married Ellen Logue on 9 December 1874 at St Paul's Anglican Church in Adelaide. He drafted a number of parliamentary laws in the 1880s, and was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1893. In 1896 he formally changed his name to "Paris Nesbit"; he was widely acknowledged joint leader of the Bar with Josiah Symon. He had run without success for the South Australian House of Assembly in 1884, and later became a strong supporter of Federation.

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