Charles St Julian

Charles James Herbert de Courcy St Julian (10 May 1819 – 26 November 1874) was a journalist, newspaper owner-editor and the first Chief Justice of Fiji.

St Julian's obituary records that he was born in France but other sources suggest London in 1818. He claimed to be the son of Thomas St Julian, French army officer, and his wife Marian, née Blackwell. However, the Australian academic, Marion Diamond, in her biography of St Julian, claims that he deliberately obscured his origins and that it is likely that his real name was Charles Trout and that his initial training was as a wood and ivory carver.

St Julian emigrated to Adelaide in 1837, proceeding in 1839 to Sydney, where he wrote for The Australasian Chronicle, and subsequently for the Commercial Journal and Advertiser.

St. Julian remained as Law Reporter for the Herald until 1872, when King Seru Epenisa Cakobau appointed him Chief Justice of Fiji. When Fiji became a British colony in 1874, Governor Sir Hercules Robinson proposed an annual pension of £200 for him, but he died near Levuka, Fiji on 26 November 1874.

Personal life St Julian was a Roman Catholic. He married Eleanor Heffernan at St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney, on 26 November 1839. She died on 28 August 1861. On 10 January 1863, he remarried, to Eliza Winifred Hawkesley, the daughter of the radical editor of the People's Advocate and New South Wales Vindicator, Edward John Hawksley.