The Tribune

JOHN Baily, a former magistrate who famously ordered the arrest of Sir Lynden Pindling, then leader of the Opposition, died in an Irish hospital on May 9.

Mr Baily, of Donnybrook, Dublin, served on the bench in The Bahamas for nine years. He is known for reading the Riot Act to a demonstrating crowd on Bay Street, on April 27, 1965, known as Black Tuesday.

In 2011, he sat down with The Tribune to reflect on his time in The Bahamas.

“Oh God, yes!” Mr Baily recalled in 2011, as the memories of Black Tuesday rushed back to him. “I read the Riot Act! Wasn’t that the day Pindling threw the mace out of the window?”

On that day, a speech by Sir Lynden, then leader of the opposition, in the House of Assembly accusing the United Bahamian Party of gerrymandering ended with the Speaker’s mace being snatched from his dais and thrown from the House of Assembly’s window.

Baily, one of only three magistrates at the time, was visited in his chambers by a police officer who asked him to read the Riot Act to quell a noisy crowd that had gathered in the public square to hear Sir Lynden’s speech.

Baily mounted a police car and read the Riot Act, which gave the police the right to use lethal force, if necessary, an hour after it was read. However, lethal force was not necessary and the crowd dispersed quietly and calmly. In 2011, he said he did not regret reading the Act, but admitted it made him unpopular.

He recalled at the time: “I always made the point: how come I was the only person left to read the Riot Act when there were two more magistrates? Where were they?”

Though he later counted Sir Lynden as a friend, Bailey is also remembered for holding the country’s first prime minister in contempt of court.

In September 1964, Baily was sent to Freeport to hear a case against a taxi driver.

Authorities in Freeport felt that the Hawksbill Creek Agreement made Freeport private property and permitted them the ability to ask anyone to leave their property.

“He (the taxi driver) kept on misbehaving and they barred him from Freeport,” Bailey told this newspaper in 2011. “His point was that you can’t bar me from my streets, from my church, from my children going to school, from my grocery store.

“The authorities persisted and he was eventually charged because he kept coming back.”

Mr Pindling, then leader of the Opposition, had also travelled to Freeport to support the taxi driver.

When the case started, a police officer told Bailey a group was picketing outside the court.

“I said that it’s a public court and they are welcome to come into court but they should not picket the court,” Mr Baily told this newspaper.

“So he went out there and told them, he came back and said that they refused to leave.”

Baily told the officer to put the group in contempt, but said he did not know Lynden Pindling was among them.

It was not until after lunch he realised the leader of the opposition was one of the men sitting in a cell at the police station.

“I phoned down to the attorney general in Nassau and I said I just arrested a group of men and I think Lynden Pindling is one of them. He said, ‘Oh my God! Look, just give them a warning and tell them they are free to go.’”

The magistrate was later successfully sued on the grounds that the men should not have been arrested.

He said years later he was friendly with Sir Lynden and would call on him after he left the Bahamas.

Baily, a member of the Irish Bar, came to Nassau as a 31-year-old on August 12, 1962 to take up his new appointment as a stipendiary and circuit magistrate. He left the bench in the Bahamas on August 12, 1971.