Patrick Real

Patrick Real (1846 – 10 June 1928) was a Supreme Court judge in Queensland, a colony and later a state of Australia.

Real was born at Limerick, Ireland, the youngest and sixth child of James Real, tenant farmer, and his wife Ellen, née Donegan. Real was taken to Australia as an infant in 1851. His father died on the voyage out, and his mother settled in Ipswich, Queensland, where he was apprenticed to a carpenter. Subsequently he was employed in the Ipswich railway workshops until, at the age of twenty-one, he formed the idea of becoming a barrister. Relinquishing his trade, he devoted himself to study. He was admitted to the Queensland Bar in September 1874 and practised with success. In February 1878 he was appointed Crown Prosecutor for the Central District of Queensland and, on the death of Justice Charles Mein in 1890, a Puisne Judge.

Real retired as a judge in 1922, aged 76, and practised as a consulting barrister, without great success. Real died in 1928 and was buried in Toowong Cemetery.