In 1865 the Davis Company was formed through a merger of the all-Black Harvey-Dixon Company and the all-white Davis Company. The new company found gold on a claim that had been abandoned by the all-white Aurora Company.
After the gold discovery, the Aurora Company asserted that it still had rights on that claim. On June 18, 1866, a jury decided that the claim would be divided equally between the Aurora and Davis Companies. However, the next day Chief Justice Matthew Baillie Begbie stepped in and, disregarding the colony’s mining regulations, re-interpreted the case to award the bulk of the claim to the Aurora Company.
He further ruled that the Black owners of the Davis Company were not entitled to any share of the Davis Company award. In recent years, Judge Begbie’s racism towards Black, Chinese and Indigenous people has been well documented.
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