A Century of Service
A Short History of Groom & Lavers Solicitors

Tools of the Trade

This is a picture of a dictaphone that was used in the office of Groom & Lavers in the early 1900s.

Dictaphone
The dictaphone worked by the user speaking into the tubed mouthpiece and a recording being made by the needle on a waxed cylinder. The cylinder was then taken from the machine and given to a transcriber. Once the transcriber had finished with the cylinder, it was erased using a “shaver”. As its name implies, it literally shaved off the soft paraffin leaving a smooth surface upon which to record new material. The cylinders could be reused until there was no longer any paraffin left on the cardboard tube. Early cylinders could only record up to 2 minutes of dictation but later larger cylinders increased recording times fourfold to about 8 or 9 minutes per cylinder.

Letter copying press
Today printers and photocopiers allow documents to be copied easily. However, in the early 1900, letters and other documents were copied by using a letter copying press.

A copying clerk would insert a sheet of oiled paper into a copying book in front of tissue paper on which he wanted to make a copy of a letter. He would then insert another sheet of oiled paper later on in the book. The success in copying the letters depended almost entirely upon the damping of the paper. The paper would be saturated and damp, not wet.

Letters were written with special copying ink. The copying clerk would arrange a portion of the letter book to be used in the following sequence starting from the front, a sheet of oiled paper, then a sheet of letter book tissue, then a letter placed face up against the back of the tissue on which the copy was to be made and then another oiled paper.

This computer was used in the firm's Oakey office.

Finally, the book was closed, placed into the press and the press screwed tightly down letting it remain a minute or two under pressure when the copy would be properly taken and then would be dried with blotting paper or held near the fire.

Computer
The computer on the right is an “all in one” unit. It combines a monitor, keyboard, disk drive and printer. The computer used the now obsolete 5.25-inch floppy disk drive in order to store information.

The computer's memory was very small in comparison to the capacity of today's computers but at the time of its first purchase, it was cutting edge technology. This computer was used in the firm's Oakey office.

The Offices

The offices of Groom & Lavers, Toowoomba.

The offices of Groom & Lavers were built in Toowoomba in 1930 by the Lavers family and Queensland Trustees.

The building includes sandstone that was sourced from Helidon. For many years the building had a bomb shelter at the rear of the building.

The Oakey Office

The first solicitor in Oakey was Allan B Stanley. He practised in the town from 1919 to 1920. He was followed by Fred Winkle. Also practising in the town at that time was Alex White. Fred Winkle continued his firm until 1 July 1955 when he sold his practice to Lindsay Statham.

Some years later White and Statham amalgamated and continued in practice until Alex White left Oakey. Lindsay Statham continued as the sole practitioner in Oakey until March 1972 when he sold his firm to John Robinson.

The offices of Groom & Lavers, Oakey.

In 1975 Mr Trevor Irvine went in partnership with Mr Robinson and the two traded as Robinson and Irvine until 1978 when Trevor Irvine took over the Oakey operation of the firm and changed the name to TJ Irvine and Co.

Mr Irvine continued to practise as a sole practitioner until 1991 when he merged with Groom & Lavers. In 2002 Trevor retired and Andrew Taylor became the resident partner of the firm.

For additional historic information, please contact Groom & Lavers.

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