David Bevan (judge)

David John Davies Bevan (11 January 1873 – 3 October 1954) was an English-born Australian judge.

He was born in London in 1873 but moved to Melbourne in 1886, attending Melbourne Church of England Grammar School and the University of Melbourne. He practised as a solicitor from 1901 to 1912, when he moved to Darwin to take up a position as a Judge of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory. His close association with the Administrator, John A. Gilruth, led to a perception of a lack of judicial independence; following the Darwin Rebellion, which led to Gilruth being recalled, a public meeting resolved that Bevan and other judges should leave the Territory forthwith. He left on 18 October 1919 and was officially removed from office on 22 September 1920 after a Royal Commission conducted by Tasmanian Justice Norman Ewing. Bevan sued the government but settled out of court. In later life he settled in Upper Beaconsfield, where he died in 1954.^[1]

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