Redmond Barry
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Sir Redmond Barry (1813 - November 23, 1880) was a British colonial judge in Victoria, Australia.
The son of Major-General H. G. Barry, of Ballyclough, Co. Cork, he was educated at a military school in Kent, and at Trinity College, Dublin, and was called to the Irish bar in 1838. He emigrated to Australia, and after a short stay at Sydney went to Melbourne, with which city he was ever afterwards closely identified. After practising his profession for some years, he became commissioner of the court of requests, and after the creation in 1851 of the colony of Victoria, out of the Port Phillip district of New South Wales, was the first solicitor-general with a seat in the legislative and executive councils. In 1852 he was appointed judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria. He also served as acting chief-justice and administrator of the government.
Redmond Barry was the Supreme Court judge for the Eureka Stockade treason trials in 1855. The thirteen miners were all rapidly acquitted to great public acclaim.
He represented Victoria at the London International Exhibition of 1862 and at the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1876. He was knighted in 1860 and was created K.C.M.G. in 1877. Sir Redmond Barry was the first person in Victoria to take an interest in higher education, and induced the local government to expend large sums of money upon that object. He was the founder of the University of Melbourne (1853), of which he was the first chancellor, was president of the State Library of Victoria (1854), national gallery and museum, and was one of the first to foster the volunteer movement in Australia.
In 1880 he presided at the final trial of Ned Kelly. When he sentenced Kelly to death by hanging, the judge uttered the customary words "may God have mercy on your soul". Kelly is reported to have replied "I will go a little further than that, and say I will see you there when I go". Ned Kelly was hanged on November 11 at the Melbourne Gaol. Twelve days later, November 23, Redmond Barry died.