Samuel Walker Griffith
29 August 1843 — 8 February 1917
Sir Samuel Walker Griffith KCMG, QC, MLA (12‑11‑6/7)
Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, 1886 - State Library of Queensland
Griffith was born in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales and migrated to Australia as a child. He graduated from Sydney University in 1862 with Honours in maths and classics and commenced practising law in Brisbane. Griffith, considered by many a Liberal, was elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1872. He was Attorney General and twice premier of Queensland.
Griffith was a delegate at the Intercolonial Convention 1883. Subsequently, Griffith was Vice‑President of the National Australasian Convention of 1891 and Chairman of the Drafting Committee which prepared the draft constitution. Griffith was president of the Queensland Federation League from 1898. He was knighted in 1886.
In 1893 Griffith left government to become Chief Justice of Queensland and from 1903 to 1919 was the first Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia. During this period he translated Dante’s Divine Comedy from Italian, which was published by Oxford University Press in 1911.
He died on the 9th of August 1920 at his grand home Merthyr which gave its name to a locality in New Farm. The funeral cortege was described by the Daily Mail as the largest ever seen in Brisbane.
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