His last position before retirement was as Chief Magistrate of Port Elizabeth, one of South Africa's larger cities.

He organised the building of "New Brighton", a township for aboriginal African people in Port Elizabeth.

Scully was born in Dublin, Ireland, raised in Cashel, County Tipperary, and then emigrated to southern Africa with his parents in 1867.

His novel Daniel Vananda describes the violence engendered by the ethnic legislation of the time.

(The main war crimes were committed in the Transvaal and the Free State.)