# History of West Australia/Reginald Marshall Stow

REGINALD MARSHALL STOW.
IN every department of a young and rising colony vigorous manhood seems to usurp the directional rod of power, persuasion, and government, and the ousted elders reluctantly behold the spring of budding power eclipse and supersede the seer autumn of gravity. In law, as in many other professions and pursuits of life, the co-efficient of prosperity must inevitably consist of personal attentive concentration on business, and ability and capacity to judiciously deal with the interested matters of clients.
Mr. Stow was born in Adelaide in 1864, and was educated at St. Peter's College in South Australia. His father was the late Judge Stow, of Adelaide, who, gifted with legal talents of a distinguished order, seems to have bequeathed to his son in the transmitted potentialities of heredity that love and aptitude for this particular calling. Loaded with a fair bundle of eruditional training, and fortunate in the tenantship of a decisive future calling, Mr. Stow entered the legal firm of R. C. Baker and Barlow, and there signed his articles of indenture. He embarked on his professional craft with ardour, and slowly acquainted himself with the multiplex detail that a lawyer's office presents in not too consecutive an order for the ambitious and closely following student. The rut, the routine, and scrimmage work of the neophyte lawyer was successfully encountered by Mr. Stow, and the smoother paths of more responsible and advanced intelligence were ultimately traversed with praiseworthy ability. Severing his connection with the firm of Baker and Barlow, Mr Stow migrated to the Northern Territory, and started practice at various points in that remote area. Steadily with the march of time his legal name was established through these regions, and his professional skill was universally availed of with satisfaction and laudatory praise. He might well have felt proud of his early efforts, and congratulated himself on his merited success.
The lack of variety and the absence of any opportunity to give a keen edge to his professional activity co-operated in inducing him to seek some more plastic and representative sphere of legal exercise. Accordingly, in 1891, Mr. Stow left for Western Australia, with the object of going to the goldfields of the Murchison. But prospects on his arrival did not present too bright a surface, and the prosperity seemed as spasmodic as the scattered discoveries of gold. He decided, on deliberation, that the colony he had left was, perhaps, as pregnant with opportunities for individual enterprise as Western Australia, and so Mr. Stow returned to Adelaide to resume his professional work. In the interim, however, Western Australia burst upon the astounded realms of the earth like a seismic shock, and in response came great joy over the marvellous discoveries of Bayley and others. With wave-like rolling and surging, the stream or humanity poured in, and Mr. Stow, who had so reluctantly left her shores before, returned to visit the fields. In August, 1895, he reached Kalgoorlie in the early dawn of the refreshing boom, which was soon to enrich many beyond the most visionary dreams of aggrandisement. But the laws of this colony, protective in their texture, prescribe six months' residential qualification by way of retardation and physical exhilaration, and with this curative the newly-arrived lawyer, nolens volens, must comply.
Mr. Stow, after fulfilling the term of the restricting conditions, joined the firm of Sinclair aad Parsons, whose legal prestige was celebrated on the Hannan's field. Mr. Stow remained in the firm till December, 1896, when he severed his connection, and started individual practice in Kalgoorlie. In the sphere of self-responsibility he has been eminently prosperous. He has worked up a wealthy and highly desirable mining connection, and his legal acumen has attracted to his side many clients, who reposefully entrust the safety of their interests to his ability and undiminished attentive concern.
Mr. Stow acts as attorney for various Adelaide companies, and his mining interests on the fields are extensive. His belief in the future of Hannan's and the fields generally is assuring, and is based on critical experience of our auriferous country. Neither over nor under estimating, he is confident of a bright destiny for the colony.
Mr. Stow is a man, shrewd, cultured, and clever in his mental status, with a fund of untiring energy which can propel with easy motion the pliable intellectual oars. Mr. Stow is respected in his profession, and admired in social life as a genuine and generous-hearted friend. Both in the capital and on the fields he is well known and deservedly popular. The enthusiastic interest he has taken in Hannan's has annexed for him the goodwill of all patriots and true partisans.