1828–1905 · Irish-born barrister & 13th Premier of Victoria
Sir Bryan O’Loghlen, 3rd Baronet, was admitted to the Irish Bar in 1856, emigrated to Australia and served as a Crown Prosecutor in Victoria from 1863, then as the colony’s Attorney-General and, from 1881 to 1883, as its 13th Premier. He is the figure The Irish Law Times named in 1890 as the man who told the Supreme Court that a verbal agreement was not worth the paper it was written on — a remark the journal treated as a splendid specimen of the Irish bull. Quote Investigator calls it reasonable to credit him, while cautioning that the same joke was already being told by anonymous characters in newspaper gags, so the ascription may itself have been manufactured.