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Item: 162427
Surname: Day (obit.,)
First Name: Edward Denny
Ship: -
Date: 9 May 1876
Place: Maitland
Source: MM
Details: Death of Mr. Edward Denny Day. A gentleman who has been withdrawn for many years from active life by sickness, died at his residence in East Maitland on Saturday morning last. Mr. Edward Denny Day was previous to an attack of paralysis, and after the attack till increasing feebleness compelled him to resign his public duties, police magistrate o f Maitland, and had occupied that responsible office for so long a time that his name was historical in connection with it. At one period of his life, Mr. Day made a considerable figure in the public eye by a gallant capture of a noted bushranging gang who had established a reign of terror in the district of the Upper Hunter. Mr. Day's career as police magistrate in Maitland was not continuous; he held the position in the very early times, was removed to Port Macquarie, and returned on the death of Major Crummer, remaining in office till his sickness obliged him to retire. Mr. Day was admirably fitted for the duties of the magisterial bench. He possessed a keen intelligence, an active mind, and very wide practical knowledge of the law. By some people he was charged with harshness and tyranny, and it must be admitted that in his administration of the law, he made it a terror to evildoers. That is rather a virtue than a failing in the dispenser of justice. His stern manner detracted materially from the estimation in which he was held by people generally, but although he made a few mistakes, his decisions on the bench were almost invariably distinguished by strict equity. He had held office at a time when rigour was specially called for from a magistrate, and when a stern enforcement of the law was an essential to social security. He was a faithful public servant , always doing his duty honourably ; and if the manner of an older and worse day was sometimes a little too rugged for the improved state of society in his later time, we can pardon it for the sake of such conspicuous fidelity. In public matters Mr. Day took such part as his position permitted, and his last extra magisterial appearance in public was, if we mistake not, as chairman of the first meeting called in this district to express detestation of the attack on Prince Alfred in 1868. It was on a Saturday afternoon, two or three days after the occurrence, when men's minds were newly-stirred by the event, and the writer has a vivid remembrance of the emotion visible on the stern face of the chairman, who, in his opening speech, referred to the country the assassin,-" a land which he loved dearly and well," for it was his own mother-land, Ireland.



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