Obituaries Australia

Arthur Feez, n.d.

State Library of Queensland, 67427

Vale Arthur Feez! Many old Queenslanders now in Sydney will read with regret the cabled announcement of his death in London, in his 76th year.

Arthur Herman Henry Feez, B.A., K.C., was born at Rockhampton on March 4, 1860, but he had many associations with this State.

He was a student at The King's School, Parramatta before he took his arts course at the Sydney University, where he graduated in 1881.

Arthur Feez and his brother, Adolph—a leading Brisbane solicitor—were sons of Colonel Albrecht Feez, M.L.A., who was a member of the eighth Queensland Parliament, that assembled in the northern capital in January, 1879. Rather notable was the fact that three members who were also making their initial bow to Mr. Speaker in the same Parliament subsequently received appointments to the Queensland Judiciary. They were Sir Arthur Rutledge—father-in-law of the present Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald—Sir Pope Cooper, and Charles Alexander Chubb.

The late Arthur Feez was a grandson of Justice Samuel Frederick Milford, M.A., the first Resident Judge of the Moreton Bay district in 1856, and subsequently an Equity Judge in Sydney, and who, it is interesting to note, was a cousin of Sir William W. Follett, Attorney-General of England in 1844. The popular Judge Milford was accorded the honour of a public funeral in Sydney 70 years ago. A stained memorial window in St. Andrew's Cathedral bears mute evidence of the high appreciation of the Bar of his sterling work on the Bench. District Court Judge Callaghan and Colonel Albrecht Feez married daughters of Judge Milford. One of his sons—Sussex—rose to the rank of major-general in the British Army.

Perhaps there is nothing extraordinary in the fact, with this long chain of legal-family antecedents, that, like the Milford family, many of the Feez clan are still associated with the law profession.

Arthur Feez, as a barrister, gained a well-earned reputation as a brilliant and courteous pleader. He was uncanny in cross-examination, while his urbane personality proved an important factor in the many successes that attended his career at the Queensland Bar—a practice he relinquished 10 years ago to take up his residence at Rose Bay, Sydney. Less than three years ago, he went on a holiday trip to England.