Category Archives: Port Phillip history

From the newspaper November 12 1841

Posted on November 11, 2008 | Leave a comment

From the Port Phillip Herald November 12 1841:

On Saturday week last Mr Mitton was travelling along the Sydney Road about 25 miles out of town; at about half past seven or eight o’clock in the evening, on approaching a tree, a man sprung from behind it aiming a blow at Mr Mitton: the horse started leaving Mr Mitton on the ground, where he was immediately seized by two men, one of whom knelt on his back keeping him down, while the other kicked him severely, so much so, that he became insensible;  as soon as he recovered he found his saddle close at hand with its girths cut and his horse at some short distance; he immediately rode to Beveridge’s, and heard that two men had been there before him; after remaining a short time, the two men entered the room he was in, but he could not identify them as he had not seen them distinctly, it being dark at the time of the robbery.  On arriving at Beveridge’s, Mr Mitton discovered that he had lost 30 pound in cash,  a watch, and a bottle of castor oil, all of which must have been taken from him when held down or  senseless.  From information received, Neil the district constable, tracked the two men to the Ovens River, where they were arrested on Mr Wallace’s station, with a watch and a considerable sum of money in their possession.  Two men whose names are Joseph Day and Robert Bruce, one of them a native, standing upwards of seven feet high, have been brought into town and were arraigned before the Police Bench yesterday, when the watch found on the prisoners was identified as being the property of Mr Mitton.  They have been remanded for further evidence.

So what happened next?  Unfortunately the Port Phillip Herald didn’t report on the case because the other papers would have reported on it first ( the three newspapers of the day were published each day in turn, and the Port Phillip Gazette reported it).   The case came up for trial on 30th November before Judge Willis.  The victim was called “Mutton”, not Mitton but the location is correctly identified- Beveridge- the later birthplace of Ned Kelly.  You go past it on the way to Sydney, but it’s very small.

beveridge

The Ned Kelly house is still there too, apparently; although I’ve never seen it up close- I think it’s in private hands and surrounded by a wire fence.  I’m surprised that it hasn’t been turned into a tourist attraction.

kellyhouse

What the newspaper report doesn’t tell us is that Mutton had been in Melbourne to apply for a liquor licence at Kilmore, but was beaten to it by another applicant.  He had a drink in Melbourne to drown his sorrows, rode on for about three hours, then refreshed himself with a brandy and water and dinner at Kilmore.  He fell into conversation with Bruce and Day at that inn.  People at the inn noticed that Day was carrying his bundle on an unusual stick.  Mutton resumed his travel at about 5.00 and was heading towards Beveridge when he was sprung from behind.  After recovering consciousness he went on to Beveridge, saw Day and Bruce and had them arrested.  The stolen goods were found on them.  The day after, Mutton returned to the scene of the crime and found the ‘stick’ marked with cutting features.

The defence lawyer tried to argue that Mutton was drunk, and that there were no trees in the location where he claimed to have been attacked.  But to no avail- the prisoners were convicted, and both sentenced to be transported for life.

Gee, you’d be filthy, wouldn’t you- stealing a bottle from a man and finding that it was CASTOR OIL!!!   Neither of the accused was a ‘native’- both were free settlers- and certainly no more was said about one of them being seven foot tall.

References:

  • Port Phillip Herald Nov 12 1841
  • Paul R. Mullaly Crime in the Port Phillip District 1835-51 p.489

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‘An Architect of Freedom: John Hubert Plunkett in NSW 1832-69’ by John N. Molony

Posted on November 9, 2008 | Leave a comment

plunkett

1973, 280p.

The author, John N. Molony signals in his introduction that this biography has its limitations.  John Hubert Plunkett, Solicitor General, Attorney General, politician, and education board member left virtually no personal papers.  As a result,

If he is to be found today it must be through public sources such as the newspapers, the parliamentary reports, the official communications between Sydney and Downing Street and the legal opinions he gave during his twenty-five years as Solicitor and Attorney-General.  It is chiefly on such sources that I have perforce relied in the writing of this book (p xiii) ….It has been my loss as much as it will be to any reader that Plunkett rarely comes alive in the narrative.  No attempt has been made, no attempt can be made to see him in his home, to dwell on his own innermost thoughts and hopes, because Plunkett did not leave any record of these things.  Some scholar of the future may perchance discover Plunkett the man; some scholar, irritated by the gaps in this work, may till this field again and reap a richer harvest…” p xiv

We have been forewarned: this book will focus on actions and decisions at a top-down level, rather than at the level of man and motivation.  However, I think Molony sells himself a bit short here because the book does give an interesting insight into the Catholicism of a man who sensed that he had been enabled, rather than disadvantaged by his faith at a particular moment of English political history.  The Catholic Emancipation Bill provided space for his patrons to further his career, and he was conscious that opportunities were open to him that had not been available for earlier generations of Catholic lawyers.  He therefore had a strong loyalty to ‘the system’ and British law and worked within it as lawyer, then politician.

The book also highlights the theme of personal consistency in the midst societal change.   Two hefty winds of change swept through his world: after the initial co-operation of the different churches in the establishment phase,  their doctrines and personalities became more rigid from the 1860s onward, and sectarian hostilities became more strident.  Secondly, the change to representative and then responsible government  meant that his world view and ways of negotiating with politicians rather than officials, needed to change.  Such fundamental challenges to his world view did not come easily to him, and I closed the book with a sense that the wealth of experience he brought to his political roles was more hindrance than benefit in a changed world.

I was interested in reading this book because firstly, I’m interested in reading biographies about Judge Willis’ contemporaries in NSW at the time (although Plunkett was absent during Judge Willis’ dismissal and, indeed, was spot-on in his predictions of what the outcome of the Privy Council appeal would be).  Secondly, I’m not really sure what an attorney general DID in the  colonial constitutional system of the time. Certainly, Judge Willis clashed with acting Attorney General Therry in NSW, and with the Attorney General in Upper Canada earlier.   Was there something about the Attorney General role that acted as a flashpoint?  Or was it the individuals filling that role?

I don’t know if I’m much further advanced in my understanding of colonial Attornies-General, but I am clearer about the fact that they acted as legal advisors for the Crown- in this case, for Governor Gipps, and if the Governor was acting to discipline or dismiss Willis, then he was presumably acting on the Attorney-General’s advice.  Hence, some tension could be expected!  I was also surprised to read that the Attorney General could act as a Grand Jury in his own right (i.e. he could launch proceedings in his own right).  For example, Plunkett acted as a Grand Jury against cattle-stealers and against a conspiracy of six men “all of substance” who conspired to parcel out land at advantageous prices to themselves.  I wonder if perhaps Judge Willis would have relished having such powers, particularly in relation to the corruption and sharp-dealing that he felt himself surrounded by.  Methinks I need to look at constitutional development a little more closely, although I must admit that my toes curl up at the thought of it.

Reading this book has also made me think about the scope for the “scholar of the future” that Molony envisages “till[ing] the field again and reap[ing] a richer harvest”.  How would/will I do anything different?

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Posted in Book reviews, Colonial biography, Judge Willis, Port Phillip history

And they’re off and racing….

Posted on November 4, 2008 | 1 comment

Garryowen lists the germs of an Australian township: first there’s  a waterhole, then a forge, then a store and grog-shop. Then there’s a Wesleyan Church, a Temperance Society, and finally a race club or a cricket club. (Finn, p. 711)

Melbourne developed that way too.  The Wesleyans and Temperance Society had already arrived by the time the first races were held by the Melbourne Race Club on what is now the site of Southern Cross railway station in 1838.  Postboy won the first race- now that’s a bit of trivia we might all need one day.  But wait- there was more!  The races had finished, people were feeling mellow, and then someone suggested a bout of the olde English sport of “grinning”- where men would stick their head through a horse collar, then spend the next five or ten  minutes pulling the ugliest faces they could.  A hat was passed around, and a prize stake of 40 shillings was soon collected.  The winner was Thomas Curnew, fifty years of age, and a carpenter by trade.

The “phizical” pantomime then commenced, and for ten minutes there was a display of physiognomical posturing, difficult to be accounted for by any deductions of anatomization.  The bones, muscles, sinews, and tissues of Curnew’s head seemed as if composed of whalebone and India-rubber.  At one time his tongue looked as if jumping out of his mouth, his lips and palate would be drawn in as if to be swallowed, whilst the chin and forehead approached as if to meet.  His antics evoked thunders of acclamation, in the midst of which he regained terra firma, secured the proceeds of the hat-shaking, and betook himself to the Fawknerian [grog] booth, where the stakes were speedily melted down through the agency of a “fire-water”.  And so wound up the first public race day in Victoria. (p. Garryowen, p713)

Now, that’s what the Melbourne Cup Carnival needs to do- revisit its ‘carnivale’ origins and bring back the “gurning” contests. In fact, there’s a World Gurning Championship too.  I don’t think her Maj is amused, though.

By 1840 the races had shifted to Flemington, named after Bob Fleming, the local butcher.  The carnival stretched over three days, reported in mind-numbing detail by the Port Phillip Herald, and years later by Garryowen as well.

It’s interesting how, for us today, horse racing has been ‘eventi-ised’ in recent years with corporate sponsorship and Government tourism funding etc.  It’s no longer about the races as such.  It seems that the drone of the race-call drifting over the back fence from a neighbour pottering around in his shed is one of the lost sounds of the 1960s.  Even twenty years ago, the news on the television would devote a good five minutes to footage of the races- a time slot gobbled up now, no doubt, by the finance report.

But much is still made of the egalitarian nature of the Melbourne Cup carnival today.  Right from its inception, the races have brought the gentlemen of Port Phillip society to the track to see their own horses run,  cheered on by the working men out for a good time.

Now, you ask yourself, can we possibly insert our Judge Willis into a day at the races?  Yes, we can.  March 1842 was the second race carnival held at Flemington.  It was hot, and in anticipation of crowd unruliness, ticket-of-leave men were called up and sworn in as special constables for the day. (Yes, ticket-of-leave men as constables).  As there was no lockup, those who were somewhat drunk and disorderly were chained up to a log and left in the sun to repent of their overindulgence.  Yet another unfortunate reveller had been apprehended and was being dragged off to the log when two gentlemen rode up, the Honorable James Erskine Murray the barrister, and Oliver Gourlay, “a fast, devil-may-carish merchant of the period”.   They remonstrated over the rough treatment of the man to the constable- “Shame! Shame! Don’t ill-use the man!”-  when Dr Martin the J.P. rode up with another justice of the peace, William Verner, to help control the crowd.  They called out to Murray and Gourlay not to interfere; Murray retorted that he was only giving the prisoner advice.  Three prisoners took advantage of the resulting contretemps to unshackle themselves from the log and disappear into the crowd. The whole thing ended up in the Police Court the next morning.  Gourlay was charged with assaulting a police constable in the execution of his duty, and the constable admitted that he would have charged Murray too, except that he was a gentleman. Gourlay was released on bail.

What does all this have to do with Judge Willis (who was not at the races himself)?  As Resident Judge, and responsible for oversight of both the bar and the magistrates, he wrote to Erskine Murray demanding an explanation for his behaviour.  He then forwarded Murray’s explanation to Verner and Martin for their side of the story.   He was not, perhaps, completely impartial here- both Verner and Martin were Heidelberg neighbours, and were to be strong supporters throughout Judge Willis’ time in Melbourne.  Murray, on the other hand, had clashed with Judge Willis in the courtroom on several occasions.

Murray applied to have Gourlay’s case heard quickly, so that he could clear his own honour.  Willis refused and postponed the case, claiming that the furore needed to die down first.  As it happened, Gourlay made good use of his time on bail.  Bushrangers were terrorizing the eastern and northern outskirts of the town and a number of gentlemen banded together to capture them.  Gourlay was shot in the melee and returned to Melbourne covered in glory.  Charges against the hero were dropped.

So, knowing that there probably won’t be a grinning (gurning) competition, or gentleman justices remonstrating with ticket-of-leave constables as they drag the tipsy off to be chained to a log, what is my pick for the races? Well, I like the young ‘girly’ on Moatize and it’s always a pleasure to see Bart Cummings and his eyebrows.  I can’t be bothered going to the TAB though, so I’ll satisfy myself with entering the sweep down at the street barbeque in half an hour’s time.  But if Moatize DOES win, you heard it here first.

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Posted in Current events, Judge Willis, Life in Melbourne, Port Phillip history

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Port Phillip Apostle No. 4 Alexander McKillop

Posted on November 1, 2008 | 9 comments

What’s Blessed Mary MacKillop doing here amongst a consideration of Port Phillip entrepreneurs of the 1840s???  I asked myself the same question when researching Alexander McKillop and finding links to Mary MacKillop.  But the Australian Dictionary of Biography helped  things come clear: she changed the spelling of her name, and ‘my’ Alexander McKillop was, in fact, her father.

All of a sudden one of the two ‘settler’ Apostles is catapaulted very much into the public eye, not in his own right, but as part of the story of his daughter, Mary MacKillop.  I found myself reading two hagiographic- in the true sense of the word- narratives of Mary’s life: In Search of Alexander MacKillop by Victor Feehan and Ann MacDonnell, and The Black Dress , a young adult fictionalized biography by Pamela Freeman.  Of course, narratives devised with a view to her beatification or eventual sainthood have their own logic and agendas.  It is to be expected that her life will be framed in terms of a struggle that she overcame, and  Alexander’s financial incompetence fits in well to that theme.  But at the same time, in terms of her own development of character, her parents’ devout Catholicism needs to seen as a facilitating rather than hindering factor, (especially in books written for Catholic teenagers and children).

Alexander McKillop had arrived alone in Sydney from Scotland as a bounty migrant in 1838 and through family contacts, obtained a position with Campbell and Sons, the Sydney merchants.  After his family joined him, he shifted to Melbourne to work in the Campbell and Sons agency in Little Collins Street.  Presumably this would have given him some experience in commercial transactions (Ville’s third category of colonial entrepreneurs included men with previous commercial experience).  He purchased a house in Brunswick Street Fitzroy for 700 pounds in 1841, and is listed by Billis and Kenyon as the owner of a property on the Merri Creek between 1840-1.  But his daughter Mary’s biographers emphasize his fecklessness.  His involvement with the Twelve Apostles imbroglio contributed directly to his insolvency in 1844, on the same day as fellow Apostle John Maude Woolley.   In May 1843 he admitted to losing more than 7000 pounds over two and a half years.  And there was a sixteen month trip alone back to Scotland in 1851 to accompany an old friend that seems curious, if not self-indulgent, requiring him to mortgage his property in Darebin Creek to his brother to raise the fare, possibly unbeknown to his wife.  When his return was delayed, his own brother foreclosed on the property, evicting his sister-in-law and young family (ah, there’s nothing like family!).  There was a string of unsuccessful jobs, futile relocations to Sydney and New Zealand and back, and a slow slide into dependence on family support from his extended family and his children’s wages.  Eventually the family splintered, with Alexander alone in Hamilton; his wife Flora running a boardinghouse in Portland, one son in New Zealand, other sons at school in South Australia and daughters in Penola (South Australia) and Coburg (Victoria).

However, the tension in creating the Mary McKillop narrative lies in balancing this financial and paternal incompetence with the strong Catholicism that Alexander shared with his family.  I’ve been too much influenced by the Scotch Presbyterian and Orange influence in Melbourne, because I initially assumed- incorrectly- by his name that he would be Presbyterian.  Instead, his family came from Lochaber in the Highlands, a region once known as ‘the cradle of the faith’ through the  ministries of  St Columba in 563AD and Coirell around 600AD, and supportive of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745.  At the age of twelve Alexander McKillop left for Rome to study for the Catholic priesthood, but was sent home in 1831at the age of nineteen because of ill-health.  On his return to Scotland he studied theology at Blair’s College in Aberdeen for a year, but left without completing his course.

On his arrival at Port Phillip he became deeply involved with the nascent St Francis’ Church and its priest Fr. Geoghegan.  He was a Trustee and Treasurer of the church; Fr Geoghegan travelled to the Darebin Creek to perform Mass for the family, and all family weddings and christenings took place at St Francis’. He instructed his children and encouraged them in their religious vocations.

His strong allegiance to the Church in some way explains his political involvement in Port Phillip at the time.  When the fiery Protestant preacher and politician John Dunmore Lang came to Melbourne as part of his electoral campaign for a seat on the Legislative Council, Alexander publicly remonstrated in letters to the Press against him and his sectarian and divisive attitudes.  Alexander came out in petitions and meetings in support for Edward Curr, Lang’s Catholic opponent for the Legislative Council.  His clerical training- incomplete though it was- gave him the literary and oratorical skills to engage in defence of his Church in the political realm.

But his political and civic involvement was even wider than this.  He attended the Levee to greet Governor Gipps when he visited in 1841, attended the Melbourne Debating Club, served on the committee of the Mechanics Institute and was a member of the St Andrews Society- a fairly pricey society with a one-guinea subscription fee.  He served on juries and occasionally on Special Juries, which is interesting because to qualify as a special juror a man had to be an Esquire or a person of higher degree, a Justice of the Peace, a Merchant not keeping a general retail shop, a bank director of a member of the Sydney or Melbourne Town Council- although the reference to the Town Council suggests that this legislation must have been promulgated after 1842.   He qualified as an elector in the Legislative Council elections of 1843, and stood very unsuccessfully for election in his own right in later years.  He was involved in the major political debates of the time, signing petitions in favour of Curr, George Arden and- most importantly for me- signed several petitions against Judge Willis.

I think that this public involvement is overlooked in the Mary McKillop biographies, and it could hold the key to Alexander’s otherwise puzzling involvement as one of the Twelve Apostles.  Even if he was not in the league financially, his social interactions on juries and committees enmeshed him into the political and financial milieu of the time.  The November 1841 Port Phillip Herald carries a small paragraph about a horse-riding accident at Heidelberg where Mr Boyd, the head of the Union Bank was injured while out riding with Rev Mr Sproat (of whom I know nothing) and Mr McKillop.  It was the Union Bank that lay at the heart of the whole Rucker scenario- was this one of the connections?  There were many other opportunities for McKillop to socialize with Fellow Twelve Apostles:  Chisholm and Carrington both attended the Debating Club; he sat on juries alongside Abraham Abrahams; Power was a Catholic who must have attended St Francis’; Were, Carrington and Welsh were all involved in the push to remove Judge Willis.  This is not merely a manifestation, as depicted by the Mary McKillop biographies,  of Alexander McKillop’s hotheadedness and querulousness : in a province where political “excitement” was making both Governor Gipps and especially Superintendent La Trobe uneasy, the networking and public visibility of this political and civic interaction was an integral part of masculinity in  Port Phillip public life.

So what’s the Entrepreneurial Lesson for Alexander McKillop?  None really, except perhaps that God works in mysterious ways. The whole Alexander/Mary McKillop scenario is ripe for “What if?” history.  Would Mary have been the woman she was had her family not been plunged into penury? How did her financial history affect the way she perceived her vocation?  What if Mary McKillop had not become involved in grassroots Catholic educational provision- who else might have instead?

References:

  • Victor Feehan and Ann MacDonell In Search of Alexander MacKillop
  • Pamela Freeman The Black Dress
  • Edmund Finn (Garryowen) Chronicles….

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Posted in 1840s depression Port Phillip, Port Phillip history, Women in Port Phillip

Port Phillip Apostle No. 8 John Maude Woolley

Posted on October 31, 2008 | Leave a comment

As part of my consideration of the financial crisis of the 1840s, you’ll be aware that I’m looking at the “Twelve Apostles”, a group of men who backed W. F. A. Rucker’s debt of 10,000 pounds to the Union Bank.  As part of this arrangement, they were committed jointly and individually liable for the debt.  This arrangement was ruinous to many of them personally, and seemed to exemplify the ricketty and precarious state of the Port Phillip economy at this time.

Among the Twelve Apostles that Garryowen listed, two seem to stand out from the rest.  One is Alexander McKillop, of whom there shall be more anon, and the other is John Maude Woolley.  They are the only two Apostles designated as “settlers”, as opposed to the “landholders” and “landowners”, merchants, solicitors and auctioneers who made up the rest of the merry band.  I find myself wondering how and why they found themselves embroiled in all of this.

Woolley in particular seems rather invisible in Port Phillip Society. According to Loyau’s Notable South Australians, he came to Port Phillip from England in 1839, bringing with him a large stock of general merchandise and set himself up in partnership with a Mr Bacchus of Bacchus Marsh.  Garryowen identifies him as a merchant located in Collins Street, but not the Woolley of the Campbell and Woolley firm which seems to have been much more prominent.

Paul de Serville lists him as a squatter and “a gentleman in society”, along with his brother Thomas Woolley, who is listed as a squatter and merchant.  Both belonged to the Melbourne Club (hence, presumably, their designation as “gentlemen”, as de Serville used membership as a basis for inclusion on his Appendix II category).  However, he is not listed as a voter for the Legislative Council elections in 1843, which had a property qualification of 200 pounds freehold or 20 pounds annual rental.  Moreover, so far I haven’t found him sitting as a juror either,  although I’m not sure what the qualifications for that were ( legislation passed in 1847 deemed 30 pounds annual income or 300 pounds property as a qualification).

In any event, things had turned sour by 1844.  On 31 January 1844 John Maude Woolley was declared insolvent, on the same date, interestingly enough, as Alexander McKillop.  Loyau describes it rather more delicately as a “retirement from business” in 1845.  Woolley returned to England, but reappeared in Sydney in 1848, where he brought horses, cattle and sheep overland to South Australia.  He joined the Customs Service in 1850, and in 1858 took up the appointment of Inspector of Sheep for three years.  In 1861 he rejoined Customs and was appointed Sub-Collector at the port of Blanchetown when it opened.

There’s photographs of him and his rather unprepossessing cottage at Blanchetown.

He later held a similar post at Morgan in South Australia, but resigned in 1883 due to illhealth.  He died in January 1885.

Is there an Entrepreneurial Lesson from John Maude Woolley? I don’t really know that there is. He had two bites of the cherry: once as a merchant, and then again as an overlander, but spent most of his life as a public servant.  And I’m absolutely at a loss to understand what could have motivated him to guarantee another man’s debts to the tune of about a thousand pounds.  I’m sure that there’s a lesson of some sort there.

References:

  • George E. Loyau Notable South Australians, published 1885.
  • Finn The Chronicles of Early Melbourne (Garryowen)

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Posted in 1840s depression Port Phillip, Port Phillip history

Port Phillip Apostle No 2 Thomas Herbert Power

Posted on October 29, 2008 | Leave a comment

I must admit that T. H. Power isn’t exactly a household name to me, although he did die in Hawthorn so perhaps he is the namesake for Power Street Hawthorn?? (not sure)

It is thought that he was born in Carrick Waterford in 1801? and was Catholic.  His father was a merchant, although I have no further details about that.  He arrived in Melbourne from Launceston in 1839 and established himself as an auctioneer in Collins Street between 1839-1846, his firm becoming one of the three principal station and stock-selling houses in Port Phillip. Garryowen describes his auction rooms as a one-storey store-like structure facing Queen Street, but many of the auctions during the land boom took place in specially-erected tents, complete with champagne refreshments.

He owned property himself:  Mt Misery (!!) at Dandenong Creek 1841-1844 and again Feb 1853, June 1856; Portland Bay in 1842; Eummering 1846-53; Acheron 1848-9; Diamond Creek 1850 and Strathmerton 1856-60.

Entrepreneurial Lesson #1 from T. H. Power: find the silver lining in every cloud.  He formed a depot for cattle awaiting sale and started boiling-down works during the 1842-3 depression. Do not under-estimate the importance of boiling-down: it was the development that pulled Port Phillip out of the 1840s depression.  The process was pioneered by the squatters William Wentworth and Henry O’Brien, who found that a previously unsaleable wether weighing 25kg could be boiled down to 12kg of tallow, which could be sold for 5-8 shillings. Wealthy landowners e.g. Bolden, Ryrie, Curr and Dr Thompson at Geelong soon moved into the industry as did our Thomas Herbert Power.  Tallow works were established along the Yarra, Salt Water (Marybyrniong) and other waterways, regularly swept away by floods and contributing no doubt to the piquancy of the Port Phillip air.  Tallow exports from Port Phillip increased enormously from 56 tons in 1843 to 480 tons the following year, reaching a peak of 1506 tons in 1848.

He doesn’t appear to have had great social visibility in Port Phillip, at least compared to some of the other “apostles”.  He inserted an advertisement in The Port Phillip Herald of March 25 1842 notifying of a reward for the return of a bundle of notes- three five-pound notes and twelve one-pound notes (fat chance, I’d say).  He attended the Separation Ball to mark Victoria’s separation from NSW on 28th November 1850, but “did not hand in the descriptive card” (whatever that means).  At the Victorian Industrial Society Exhibition of 1851, he won a prize for the best hog and the colonial best mare.

His civic contribution was more substantial- indeed, as Garryowen points out, he was one of the few “Knights of the Hammer” who were involved in public life.  He was on the Richmond Bridge Committee of 1850, and served on the National Board of Education.  He was a director of the National Bank 1860-66 and a Commissioner of the Savings Bank of Victoria.  He served as a member of the Legislative Council between November 1856 and September 1864.  He died in Hawthorn on 28th November 1873.

References:

  • Re-member: a database of all Victorian MPs since 1851
  • A. S. Kenyon ‘The Port Phillip Boom and its Results’ The Royal Australian Historical Society Journal and Proceedings Vol XII, IV, 1926 p. 202-223.
  • Finn, Edmund  The Chronicles of Early Melbourne
  • Billis, R. V. and Kenyon A. S. Pastoral Pioneers of Port Phillip

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Posted in 1840s depression Port Phillip, Port Phillip history

A poignant little postscript to J B Were

Posted on October 26, 2008 | Leave a comment

The Chronicles of Early Melbourne, from which I’ll be drawing much of my “Entrepreneur Watch” material  is really a fascinating book.  It comes in 2 large volumes and comprises 67 chapters.  It was written by the journalist Edmund Finn some thirty years after the events it describes, drawing on his own experiences and the newspaper reports he wrote at the time,  and the papers and memoirs of Port Phillip citizens still living in the 1880s.  It is witty, racy and, I suspect, rather prone to exaggeration, bluster and mockery.

It’s rather self-referential in places, where Finn discusses the process by which the material was collected and arranged.  As Finn himself tells it, when he was researching the chapter about the Twelve Apostles (which I shall discuss more when I get to Apostle No 1. Rucker), J. B. Were expressed his concern about  digging up the past, reminding Finn that some of the people were still alive and that their children and grandchildren might take action against him. When he enquired what sources Finn was going to draw his material from, he offered to write up his own recollections and construction of the events.  Finn did not, as he suspected Were wished him to, incorporate the material into his own narrative but instead attached it as an appendix.

I’ll let Finn tell the story from here on in:

The next time I saw Mr Were was our last meeting in this world, and it was caused by the receipt of the following communication:-

Wellington, 1st May 1885, Brighton Beach

Dear Mr Finn- I have been under the doctor’s care for the last six months, suffering from an attack of jaundice, and have become very emaciated with wasting and loss of appetite.  I am ordered to Riverina for change of climate, and I leave on Monday morning.  If you can see me this evening, or at any time tomorrow, I am gathering some papers which I desire to hand you, and to have the pleasure of a short conversation with you.  The terminus is within sight,  and a very short distance from my house.  Yours faithfully, J. B. Were.

After reading the foregoing I handed it to a friend sitting by me, remarking that the “terminus” mentioned therein was intended as a way-mark to point to my intended destination; but something seemed to foreshadow it as the terminus of the writer’s long and not unnotable terrestrial career…  In compliance with his desires, I visited Mr Were that afternoon, and noticed such a striking change in his appearance and manner as to leave but little doubt that if not absolutely in sight, the “terminus” was not far off….Shaking hands with Mr Were, we parted with mutual good wishes; but I never saw his face again. (p. 992)

So, poor old J. B.  The terminus was, indeed, within sight and a very short distance from his house.

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Posted in 1840s depression Port Phillip, History, Port Phillip history

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Port Phillip Apostle No.10 J.B. Were

Posted on October 25, 2008 | 3 comments

Is the name J. B. Were familiar to you?  It should be. Goldman Sachs JBWere is a large, multinational financial company, and prior to metamorphising into this splendid many-named creation, J B Were was a well-known Melbourne stockbroking firm.  In fact, come to think of it, my cousin worked there.

Although Garryowen places J. B. Were as No. 10 on his list of Twelve Apostles, I’ll start off with him because I have borrowed a book about him and he, of all of the twelve that Garryowen listed, most clearly evokes the term “entrepreneur” for me. The book, called “The House of Were 1839-1954” is an in-house publication.  It has a rather curious note on the title page:

This publication has not been registered as a book and is not available for sale because it has been issued by J. B. Were & Son for the interest and information of its clients, public companies, financial and other institutions with whom the prestige and business interests of the firm are identified.

Recipients of a copy of the publication are requested to regard the contents as for their information alone.  It is desired that no reference should be made to the publication in the Press.

What an odd statement. Well, they don’t say anything about blogs or the internet…..

Jonathan Binns Were was born in Somerset on 25 April 1809, the third of four sons to a landed gentry family.   The House of Were states that according to Burke’s Dictionary of Landed Gentry, the original family name was Giffard and the Weare-Giffard family is documented back to 1411 during the reign of Henry IV.  His father inherited from his father and grandfather three estates in Somerset: Landcox, Osmonds and Penslade.

De Serville, however, is rather equivocal about his social status.  Were is not found in De Serville’s Appendix 1 Gentlemen by Birth (“Gentlemen colonists from titled, landed or armigerous families”), but instead in Appendix III Colonists Claiming Gentle Birth (“A list of colonists whose claims to gentle birth have not been fully established. Those who were members of good society are also listed in Appendix II”).  Under the entry for Were, De Serville writes:

Were, Jonathan Binns. Merchant.  Son of Nicholas Were and his wife Frances Binns.  It is difficult to know whether to place him in Appendix I or III. His family were landowners in Devon and Somerset (especially his great-grandfather). However, after appearing in Burke’s Commoners, the family was dropped from the first and subsequent editions of Burke’s Landed Gentry.  It is hard to escape the conclusion that they were an ascendant family who gained the capricious attention of the Burkes and then lost it.  Were was prominent in the commercial and public life of the colony, where he died in 1885.

After finishing school Were received business training in the house of Collins and Co in the port city of Plymouth. Collins and Co. were involved in trade with the colonies where, no doubt, Were would have heard from colleagues and  clients about the commercial opportunities abroad.  Such contacts would place him in Ville’s third category – i.e. colonial merchants with experience in Britain or the colonies.

His father and older brother broke the entail on the Were estate and Jonathan received 9000 pounds from the sale of the family properties.  With this he purchased goods that netted him 70,000 pounds on resale in Australia.  (The ADB cites lower figures for this). Nonetheless, Entrepreneurial Lesson from J.B. Were #1: use your capital to buy cheap, sell dear.  Or perhaps there should be a lesson before that: have capital.

In fact, when he arrived in Melbourne on the William Medcalfe, most of the cargo in the hold belonged to him, including a demountable house, and a consignment of port wine that he picked up at Oporto en route. He, his Quaker wife, 4 year old daughter and baby son, his brother-in-law and two servants arrived in Melbourne on 15th November 1839 after a journey of 113 days.  Garryowen lists the other first and intermediate class passengers on the ship, including Mrs C. Liardet and five children in the intermediate berths, the wife of Liardet who painted the picture on my blog header.  There were also 230 assisted immigrants on board – I’m not sure whether they were ‘his’ bounty migrants or not, but he was certainly an immigration agent later on.

Entrepreneurial lesson #2 from J. B. Were: get cracking! Six weeks after arrival, Were assembled his house on the south-west corner of Collins and Spring Street (where No. 1 Spring Street is now?) which he purchased for 3 pounds 10 shillings an acre and named the property “Harmony Lodge”.  At about the same time he commenced trading as a general merchant advertising tents for sale on 1 January 1840- a highly sought after product.  By February, he had established himself as a general merchant, shipping and commission agent and advertised 200 rams due to arrive from the Murrumbidgee.  In March he formed Were Bros. and Co with his brother-in-law Robert Stevenson Dunsford (who had journeyed out with them) and his younger brother George Were (who must have made his own way to Melbourne separately).   Forming networks with family members like this, as Ville pointed out, was advantageous in a low-trust environment. By April 1840 he was advertising to buy wool from pastoralists, make advances against it, then ship it to London.  He was involved in the exchange business early- discounting bills for customers and arranging drafts on London, Sydney, Hobart and Launceston businesses.  He became involved in importing prefabricated houses (including a teak house!) and refurbished sailing sailing ships.

Entrepreneurial lesson #3 from J. B. Were: network! He was one of the directors of the Melbourne Auction Company, a successful venture which was ultimately thwarted by legislative red-tape.  He was also a director of the Melbourne Bridge Company which, although it had plans for a splendid iron suspension bridge, settled for a humble wooden bridge across the Yarra because of uncertainty about government plans to build Princes Bridge.  He was Chairman of the Temporary Exchange, a gathering of merchants who met daily at 12.00 noon in the rooms of the Melbourne Auction Company. He was a director of the Union Bank in 1841, a Lloyds Insurance Agent in 1842 and an agent for Alliance Fire and Life Assurance Company in 1843.  He joined the Shipping and Steam Packet Association in 1842 and was one of the five members of the the Steam Navigation Board which licensed and supervised steam ships.

He developed political and cultural networks as well. By May 1840 he was appointed one of the committee of three to draft a Separation memorial, praying for separation from NSW. He was involved in the planning for the Melbourne Hospital, he was on the Botanic Garden’s committee, and involved in the British and Foreign Bible Societies and the Philosophical Society (later the Royal Society).

Entrepreneurial lesson #4 from J. B. Were: position, position, position. Henry Dendy arrived in Port Phillip with a signed and sealed certificate from London allowing him to select 5120 acres at a fixed price of one pound per acre (a definite bargain given that land was selling at 5 to 40 pounds an acre at auction!).  Not unsurprisingly, he found that La Trobe and locally-based settlers resented this method of land sale, and difficulties were placed in his way when he tried to buy land at Williamstown and near Heidelberg.  Dendy approached J. B. Were, who advised him to use his land voucher in what is now Brighton.  It is not known when it happened, but by April 1845 Were was in possession of half the original survey.  He built there “Moorabbin House” with stone walls three feet thick, with huge hidden doors across the front that could be pulled across to provide a barricade should the house be attacked- I assume by aborigines? bushrangers? The house was demolished in 1924.

He later built other houses in Brighton again, Toorak and East St. Kilda.

Entrepreneurial lesson #5 from J. B. Were: be careful helping out your friends. The whole circumstance by which he became one of the “twelve Apostles” was by joining with ten other colleagues to come to the financial aid of William Rucker (Port Phillip Apostle No. 1) when he ran into difficulties as part of the general financial upheaval of the early 1840s.  It seems that he, in particular, sustained huge financial loss from this agreement and even ten years later, there was an instability in his affairs that led to further financial problems in 1854-6.

And what about Were’s relationship with Judge Willis? Garryowen claims that, after initially cordial relations, the two men fell out over Judge Willis’ pursuit of William Lonsdale (another story for another blogpost) and Willis’ emnity turned on Were. The most colourful display of this animosity occurred when Were was sitting as a magistrate alongside Willis on the bench when his name arose during the evidence being tendered to the court.  Willis ordered Were into the witness box where, startled and unprepared as he was, he was rather unforthcoming.  Willis charged him with contempt of court, and when Were asked for a copy of the Judge’s notes, Willis sentenced him to jail, and with every squeak of protest from Were, upped the sentence a month at a time.   Were actually served only one night in jail before being confined to the Rules, and the verdict was overturned once Judge Willis was replaced soon after.  Certainly, J. B. Were appears regularly on the petitions urging Justice Willis’ dismissal.

References

  • The House of Were 1839-1954: The History of J. B. Were & Son and its founder Jonathan Binns Were, 1954
  • Finn, Edmund The Chronicles of Early Melbourne 1835 to 1852: historical, anecdotal and personal by ‘Garryowen’ Melbourne, Fergusson and Mitchell, 1888
  • de Serville, Paul Port Phillip Gentlemen and Good Society in Melbourne before the Gold Rushes Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1980
  • Ville, Simon ‘Business development in Colonial Australia’ Australian Economic History Review Vol 38 No 1, 1998 , pp. 16-41

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Making a motza in Port Phillip

Posted on October 24, 2008 | 6 comments

Let’s be quite clear about this: people came to Port Phillip to make money as individuals.  It wasn’t a penal colony like Van Diemens Land or Sydney. It wasn’t a philosophical-cum-evangelical political experiment like South Australia.  It was not a privately-run settlement scheme like Western Australia.  It was conceived in the pubs of Launceston, and talked over and gesticulated to by the pastoral overlanders of Sydney, by men out to make a motza and the government could just get stuffed.  And even more importantly, in the early years people came to Port Phillip from another Australian colony, rather than coming out straight from Europe.

As part of thinking about financial security in 1840s Port Phillip, I recently read Simon Ville’s article ‘Business development in colonial Australia’ .  He points out that New South Wales (of which Port Phillip was part) had strong entrepreneurial capacity:

1. There were the ex-convicts and emancipists who had been either pardoned or their sentences had expired, who, swept by fate onto the other side of the world were denied conventional routes to achievement, but had scope to forge their own, too.  Certainly some had only a poor education, and they often lacked institutional and infrastructure suport.  But some also had a strong desire for legitimacy, esteem and recognition.

2. There were the government officials, who had had access to higher educational levels, but were not motivated by the need for social elevation.  Because of their position in a penal colony, they had access to a means of overseas payment and free labour.  Particularly in the first decades, there was scope to indulge their entrepreneurial proclivities.  This was less true of Port Phillip than Sydney, but is nonetheless worth bearing mind when Judge Willis started castigating government officers for “speculation”.

3.There were colonial merchants living locally.  They were usually from Britain; sometimes from India, and they brought with them their accumulated experience of previous success, capital, information and credit links of their overseas partners and agents.

I suspect that there’s a fourth group too. Jim McAloon speaks of settler capitalists, of lower middle class origins who brought with them the values of the British middle class: thrift, deferred gratification, self reliance and steady capital accumulation.  Although his research is based on the South island of New Zealand, he cites Paul de Serville’s work in Port Phillip  on the colonial elite which distinguishes one fifth of them as  gentlemen by ‘birth’ as distinct from gentlemen by education and profession and a large group of unclassifiable middle-class gentlemen.

Industries and opportunities draw on innovation for success (Ye Gods! I sound like a management textbook!). Innovation doesn’t just mean invention of the completely new- it also involves the modification of imported technology to local circumstances.  Often entrepreneurial decisions of this kind are made under conditions of great uncertainty and highly imperfect information- and you can’t get much more uncertain and imperfect than settlement in a new colony on a new continent in a different hemisphere.

Ville points out that vertical integration is common at the start of an industry’s life, and a signal of a low-trust environment, but that as an economy matures, vertical integration is replaced by specialization .  Vertical integration is a form of management control where all aspects of a product or process are under the control of a common owner.  For example, the Sydney merchant Robert Campbell was involved in whaling, shipbuilding, shipping, banking and farming.  Early NSW certainly qualifies as a low-trust environment: the convict origins of the colony were reinforced by mutual suspicion between convicts, officers and immigrant merchants.  Networks, bound by social, religious and kinship ties provided a high-trust organizational form based on common interests and propinquity.  Often individual entrepreneurs operated several distinct partnerships with different business associates. Certainly in Port Phillip, we can see that entrepreneurs were involved in diverse activities- e.g. general mercantile, shipping and commission agencies, wool purchase and consignment. Their ubiquity and prominence makes them particularly important when we consider who backed whom in the local politics of the district, and especially in relation to Judge Willis’ dismissal.

Edmund Finn (‘Garryowen’) speaks of the Twelve Apostles who were dominant in financial circles in Port Phillip in these early days. They are:

  1. William Frederick Augustus Rucker, Merchant
  2. Thomas Herbert Power, Auctioneer
  3. John Pascoe Fawkner, Landholder
  4. Alexander McKillop, Settler
  5. John Moffat Chisholm, Landowner
  6. John Hunter Patterson, Landowner
  7. James Purves, Landowner
  8. John Maude Woolley, Settler
  9. Abraham Abrahams, Merchant
  10. Jonathan Binns Were, Merchant
  11. Horatio Nelson Carrington, Solicitor
  12. Patricius William Welsh, Merchant.

I can tell you now without going any further, that this group of men, like nearly every constellation in Port Phillip was split right down the middle in relation to Judge Willis.  Fawkner was his staunchest ally, Carrington his most ardent enemy, and the rest are distributed between them (with perhaps, at first glance, more opposed to him than for him).

My task is to look at these 12 men.  Do they fit into Ville’s three categories at all? How does de Serville classify them?  What was their entrepreneurial story in Port Phillip? How did the 1840s financial meltdown affect them?  And what position, if any, did they take in relation to Judge Willis?

References

  • Ville, Simon P. ‘Business Developmentin colonial Australia’ Australian Economic History Review vol 38 no. 1 March 1998 pp.16-41
  • McAloon, Jim ‘Gentlemanly Capitalism and Settler Capitalists: Imperialism, Dependent Development and Colonial Wealth in the South Island of New Zealand’ Australian Economic History Review, Vol 42, No. 2, July 2002
  • de Serville, Paul  Port Phillip Gentlemen and Good Society in Melbourne before the Gold Rushes, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1980
  • Finn, Edmind, The chronicles of early Melbourne, 1835-1852: historical, anecdotal and personal (by “Garryowen”, Melbourne, Fergusson and Mitchell, 1888 p. 707



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Alas poor debtor!

Posted on October 21, 2008 | Leave a comment

As part of my avowed intention to explore the experience of financial anxiety during the 1840s, my eye was attracted to this little morsel in the Port Phillip Herald of 10 May 1842:

SHARP PRACTICE. A rather novel mode of obtaining the payment of a debt from an insolvent, has just come under our notice.  A gentleman of our acquaintance, whose change of fortune from affluence to indigence occasioned him so much excitement as to materially effect his intellect, and to leave him at times in a state of perfect imbecility, was a few days since arrested by the Deputy Sheriff at the suit of a Sydney creditor.  Having found the necessary bail he was allowed to occupy a tenement within the Rules. He had not been many days in confinement before his spirits were so materially afflicted as to bring on the malady before alluded to, and under which, we regret to state, he still labours.  In this fit of nature he proceeded to the wharf, but in less than half an hour returned to his prison, thus stepping out of the limits laid down for his safe incarceration.  Having been seen outside the Rules, a party acting as agent for the Sydney creditor, forthwith instructed his solicitor to write to his bail, informing them that as the debtor had exceeded his limits he should hold them liable for the account of the debt and costs, which are very considerable.  Now, for the honor of the Province, we hope such a case will never be brought before a court of justice, for sharper practice we never, in the whole career of our colonial experience, heard of…. An application is about being made to the Judge to release the unfortunate man from confinement upon the score of insanity, and if his Honor has the power, who can doubt his will to extend such an act of mercy?

Well, I’m now mid-way through June 1842, and I haven’t seen any public applications of mercy to the Judge, but perhaps such things did not occur in open court.  I, at least, do wonder about his will to extend such an act of mercy.  Perhaps he’d decide that this was another case of dishonesty and dissembling that he had to “sift to the bottom”: but, then again, perhaps not.  It was exactly this unpredictability that made his courtroom even more anxious than it had to be.  Which Judge Willis would be sitting today?- merciful Willis? or avenger Willis?

A number of things to remark on here:

1. The Port Phillip Herald is being particularly kind in their reportage of this case.  Certainly, they have not held back at all when insolvents have absconded, or indulged in their own “sharp practice” to avoid their debts.  Perhaps the key lies in that this is a “gentleman of our acquaintance” rather than a speculator, embezzler or rascal, as they could have just have easily designated him.

2. This is one of the first references I have found to insanity caused by insolvency.  There are certainly references to insanity and suicide:indeed, the very next issue of the Port Phillip Herald referred to the putrid bodies washing up against the wharf at the end of Elizabeth Street. (I wonder if it was, in fact, this gentleman? I haven’t seen any further mention of him.) There are many coronial inquests into women, in particular, throwing themselves into the Yarra. I wonder what stories lie there.

3. Although there was a strong belief in “British justice”, legislation particularly prior to the 1850s varied between colonies and was not necessarily the same as in England.  This was true of the Insolvency Act in New South Wales, which differed from the English insolvency laws in many fundamental respects.  The legislation was drafted by Justice Burton in 1841and allowed all debtors to take advantage of bankruptcy provisions.  Instead of imprisonment, as under the English act, debtors’ assets were distributed to their creditors, allowing them to resume business quickly.  Unlike the English law, the legislation did not emphasize morality- possibly because it was drafted at a time when many otherwise ‘moral’ people were facing insolvency. Imprisonment for debt was abolished in NSW in 1843 (i.e. after this vignette), predating similar changes to the English law by 26 years.  Justice Willis, however, was critical of Burton’s legislation (perhaps because it was Burton’s legislation and not his own???) and preferred the English approach.

4.  The ‘rules’ were instituted by Justice Willis almost as soon as he arrived in Port Phillip, initially in response to the severe overcrowding in the very small jail.  Rather than being sentenced to jail, minor offenders, bail applicants and insolvents, could be ‘confined to the rules’, which took up quite a large area of the built-up area of central Melbourne.

Bear in mind that at this time, the major development was located mainly along the Collins Street and Elizabeth Street area, rather than eastward along Swanston Street which, although probably regarded as the main thoroughfare through Melbourne today, was almost bushland in the early 1840s.  Confinement to the rules was often not a particular hardship: many people who were declared insolvent actually lived in the area, although it appears that our belaboured gentleman didn’t as he had to rent a ‘tenement’ specially.

5. Finally, we have to trust to our own empathy and imagination to flesh out this little vignette.  We can imagine him standing on the river bank, watching the river swollen with winter rains, weighing up his options, torn between loyalties and honour, then turning away and walking along the unpaved streets back into the rules again.

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