Lawfully Occupied: The Centennial History of the Otago District Law Society by M J Cullen.

Published 1979, John McIndoe Limited, Dunedin, NZ, first edition. VERY SCARCE.

Good hardback with jacket. A little bumping, fading and marks to red boards; no inscriptions; pages lightly tanned; minor marks; last blank page was stuck to previous page at corner and left a mark. Jacket is rubbed; creased and chipped with some small tears. 229 pages, illustrated.

Quote from author: "The archives conveyed also the professional lives of the great characters who were called to the bar in Otago, and who left a lasting impression. There are the founders of the great Dunedin legal dynasties. But one also thinks of Joshua Strange Williams, the perfect English gentleman who studied law and mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, emigrated to New Zealand for health reasons (bringing his cigars with him) and became a loved and revered figure as one of the longest serving Supreme Court judges. One thinks also of Alf Hanlon, the famous criminal barrister whose defence of Minnie Dean was one of his rare failures, and surely the only New Zealand lawyer to inspire a television drama series. It was Hanlon who as President of the Society led the profession in a grand process through the city streets to the opening of the then new Supreme Court building in June 1902. Even then their were protests about the building, and its proximity to the noise of the railyards which, it was argued, would interfere with the machinations of Otago s legal minds. And in the official photograph of that occasion, positioned front and centre amidst the wigs and top-hats and watch-chains of the profession, we see the diminutive figure of Ethel Benjamin, the first and for some forty years the only woman ever admitted to the bar in New Zealand."

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