Bailiff pays tribute to former magistrate
TRIBUTE has been paid to a former stipendiary magistrate of the Guernsey court who died last month five days short of his 92nd birthday.
John [Tony] Gillett held the position from 1982 to 1997. The previous stipendiary magistrate had left the role in 1967 and it was revived in 1982 by the then Bailiff Sir Charles Frossard to ease the workload of jurats who were then serving as acting magistrates.
Current Bailiff Sir Richard Collas told a full sitting of the Royal Court that Mr Gillett had soon built up a reputation for fairness and equal treatment of all.
‘As an advocate, I appeared before him on many occasions and was grateful for the courtesy he always showed to members of the Bar,’ he said.
‘He listened carefully to the evidence and to our submissions.
‘His sound knowledge of the law meant that there were few appeals. I recall that court sessions would always be adjourned mid-morning or mid afternoon to enable the magistrate to take not just a coffee break or tea break but a nicotine break while he relit his pipe.’
Mr Gillett was born in Malvern, Worcestershire. He went to Oxford and after National Service entered the colonial service, in which he served from 1951 to 1968 in Aden and what was then known as Somaliland.
He served as a district commissioner in British Somaliland, a job which required the discharge of magisterial duties including the imposition, very occasionally in Mr Gillett’s case, of sentences of corporal punishment which were carried out within the court.
His first job on his return to England was as a legal advisor employed by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments – a sort of super legislation committee that reports on badly drafted subordinate legislation.
In 1970 he was appointed to the post of Legislative Draftsman in Guernsey under Procureur Ernest Shanks.
Mr Gillett’s wife, Judy, died in 2012. They had three children, Charles, John and Amanda.
John is better known as actor Aden Gillett.
