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The Treasure Chest: News and Reviews
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DICTIONARY OF AUSTRALIAN BIOGRAPHYAngus and Robertson--1949L Main Page and Index
of Individuals
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LALOR, PETER (1827-1889),leader of the Eureka rebellion and politician, |
was born at Tinakill, Queen's County, Ireland, in 1827 (the date is sometimes given as 1823 but 1827 is more usual, and the notices of his death stated that he was in his sixty-second year on 9 February 1889). His father, Patrick Lalor, was a landed proprietor who sat for some time in the house of commons. Peter Lalor was educated at Carlton College and Trinity College Dublin, became a civil engineer, and emigrated to Australia in 1852. He first worked on the Melbourne-Geelong railway line, then went to the diggings in the Ovens district, and then to Ballarat. In 1852 a licence fee of £1 10s. a month had been imposed on the diggers which caused great dissatisfaction. Parliament consisted of a single chamber, of which one-third of the members were nominated by the crown, the remainder were elected under a much restricted franchise, and the diggers being unrepresented had no means of having their grievances redressed in a constitutional way. In December 1853 the fee was reduced to £1 a month, but the law was administered tyrannically, and even brutally and unjustly. Several incidents excited the indignation of the diggers, who publicly burnt their licences and decided to resist the police and military which had been sent from Melbourne to Ballarat. Lalor was appointed their commander-in-chief. The men began to drill, and the Eureka stockade was built. On the morning of Sunday 3 December 1854 the stockade was stormed by the military, and Lalor was wounded in the shoulder and subsequently had to have an arm amputated. A reward of £200 was offered for information that would lead to his apprehension, but his friends were loyal to him, and he remained in hiding until after several other insurgents had been tried and in every case found not guilty by the jury.
Towards the end of 1855 Lalor began his political career as representative for Ballarat in the old legislative council. Soon after he was appointed an inspector of railways, and held this position until the passing of the "Officials in Parliament Act". In 1856 under the new constitution he was elected to the legislative assembly for South Grant and held this seat until the election of 1871. He was re-elected for this constituency in 1875 and continued to represent it until his death. He was postmaster-general and commissioner of trade and customs in the Berry (q.v.) ministry from August to October 1875, and held the second of these positions in the second Berry ministry from May 1877 to March 1880. He was a capable chairman of committees for several years, and on the retirement of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (q.v.) in 1880, was elected speaker. In this position he was completely impartial and was one of the best speakers the Victorian parliament has ever had. A severe illness compelled him to resign on 29 September 1887, and parliament voted him a retiring allowance of £4000. He had previously refused a knighthood. He died on 9 February 1889. He married in 1854, Alicia Dunn, who pre-deceased him, and was survived by a son, Dr J. Lalor.
Lalor was six feet in height and broad in proportion. He was always an advocate of the rights of the people, moderate in his views, and never afraid to speak for himself. Twice while minister of customs he had the courage to vote against proposals made by his leader. He was not an outstanding politician either as a private member or as a minister, but he was an authority on constitutional subjects and thoroughly conversant with parliamentary usages. With his fine presence and voice he dominated the house as speaker. "The first duty of a speaker," he said, "is to be a tyrant. Remove him if you like, but while he is in the chair obey him. The speaker is the embodiment of the corporate honour of the house. He is above party." Lalor never allowed scenes to develop' and was unrivalled in his management of unruly members.
The Age and The Argus, Melbourne, 11 February 1889; H. G. Turner, Our Own Little Rebellion.
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LAMB, SIR HORACE (1849-1934),mathematician, |
son of John Lamb, was born at Stockport, Cheshire, England, on 27 November 1849. Educated at Stockport Grammar School, Owens College, Manchester, and Trinity College, Cambridge, he was 2nd wrangler and 2nd Smith's prizeman in 1872. He was elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in the same year, and in 1875 was appointed professor of mathematics in the newly founded university of Adelaide. For the next 10 years the average number of students doing the arts course at Adelaide was fewer than 12, and though Lamb also did some popular lecturing, his work was comparatively light. This gave him time to develop his own subject, and in 1878 appeared his able and original A Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of the Motions of Fluids. From 1881 to 1884 he published a brilliant series of memoirs dealing with the application of harmonic analysis to vibrational problems, and in 1885 he was appointed professor of mathematics at the university of Manchester. He held this position for 35 years, and proved himself to be an inspiring teacher and an excellent administrator. He was known as one of the great mathematicians of his time, and his various treatises firmly established this position. His Hydrodynamics appeared in 1895 (6th ed. 1933), and his other works included An Elementary Course of Infinitesimal Calculus (1897, 3rd ed. 1919), Propagation of Tremors over the Surface of an Elastic Solid (1904), The Dynamical Theory of Sound (1910, 2nd ed. 1925), Statics (1912, 3rd ed. 1928), Dynamics (1914), Higher Mechanics (1920), The Evolution of Mathematical Physics (1924). When Lamb resigned his chair in 1920 he went to live at Cambridge. He died on 4 December 1934. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1884, was twice vice-president, received its Royal medal in 1902 and, its highest honour, the Copley medal in 1924. He was president of the London Mathematical Society 1902-4, president of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, and president of the British Association in 1925. He was knighted in 1931. He married in 1875, Elizabeth Foot of Dublin, who died in 1930. He was survived by three sons and four daughters. The sons were born at Adelaide and all became distinguished. At the time of their father's death, Ernest Horace Lamb was professor of civil and mechanical engineering at East London College, university of London, Walter Rangeley Maitland Lamb, a noted classical scholar, was secretary of the academy of arts, and Henry Lamb was a well-known artist.
The Times, 5 December 1931; Who's Who, 1935; The English Catalogue.
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LAMBERT, GEORGE WASHINGTON THOMAS (1873-1930), the third name was never used,artist, |
was born at St Petersburg, Russia, on 13 September 1873, the fourth child and only son of George Washington Lambert, an American engineer who went to Russia to assist in the construction of railways. His mother was the only child of an English engineer, Thomas Firth, engaged in the same work. The elder Lambert died shortly before his son was born, and some two years later the family removed to Germany and stayed there for six years with Mrs Lambert's father. On their return to England George Lambert was sent to Kingston College in Somerset and made good progress. He began to draw in pencil, and won a prize at South Kensington in an under 12 competition.
Lambert's grandfather Thomas Firth, having now retired, decided to go to Australia with his daughter and her family to join his brother who had been there for some years. When they arrived they went to the brother's station at Eurobla near Nevertire, New South Wales. Here the boy rode and swam and got close to nature, and little attempt was made to continue his schooling. At 13 years of age he went to Sydney and became a junior clerk in the office of Macarthur and Company, wholesale drapers. He was found unsuitable for this work, and a fresh position was obtained as probationer-clerk in the government shipping office, where his surroundings were pleasanter and the hours shorter. In his spare time he did much reading and became fond of music. But he felt the bush calling to him and after five years of office life obtained a situation on a station. He worked hard and at week-ends did much sketching. While on a visit to Sydney he met B. E. Minns (q.v.) and showed him some of his bush sketches. He was advised to see Julian Ashton (q.v.) who was instructor of the Royal Art Society's classes between 1892 and 1896. Lambert received some encouragement and joined the evening classes. He obtained a position at the cash desk in a grocer's shop, began to send black and white sketches to the Sydney Bulletin, and exhibited his first picture at the Royal Art Society's exhibition held in 1894, a small painting of a horse and cart. By 1896 his drawings were being accepted by the Bulletin, and he was able to give up the shop and give full time to his painting. In that year his picture, "A Bush Idyll", was exhibited, and was bought by the Sydney gallery for 20 guineas. He later on spent some time in the country and made studies for "Across the Blacksoil Plains", which was exhibited at the Society of Artists exhibition in 1899 and first brought him prominently before the public. The picture was so large that it could not be conveniently fitted into his studio, and was painted in an outhouse in his mother's garden. Considering the difficulties under which it was painted it was an amazing production, immature no doubt, but strong and full of movement. It was purchased by the national gallery of New South Wales for 100 guineas, and it was also awarded the Wynne prize of £27.
In 1899 the New South Wales government gave the Society of Artists an annual subsidy of £400. A travelling scholarship of £150 a year was established, and the first award was made to Lambert. Three pictures had to be submitted, Lambert's being a subject-picture "Youth and the River", a portrait study of his mother, and a small landscape. He married Amy Absell on 4 September 1900 and two days later sailed for London. By a fortunate chance another distinguished student, Hugh Ramsay (q.v.), joined the vessel at Melbourne. Arrived in London Lambert took a studio at Bayswater while Ramsay visited Scotland, and in a few weeks both artists went to Paris and entered at Colarossi's school. Lambert obtained a studio on the top floor of a factory in the Latin quarter in the same building with Ramsay and James MacDonald who shared a studio. MacDonald was afterwards successively director of the Sydney and Melbourne galleries. Others in the same building were Ambrose Patterson and Frieseke, the well-known American artist. Lambert had a small salary from the Bulletin but found the toll of drawings required hampered his work. He was represented at the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts in 1901 by his "La Guitariste", but his recognition was slower than Ramsay's who had already begun to make a reputation. In June Lambert's son Maurice was born which added to his responsibilities, and he was not finding any buyers in Paris. In November 1901 he returned to London.
The contract to supply the Bulletin with drawings had been given up but much work was done for English magazines. In 1903 a portrait of Miss Thea Proctor was painted and hung at the Royal Academy exhibition. Miss Proctor and his own family afterwards furnished the models for a series of pictures exhibited at the academy, which included "Lotty and the Lady" (1906), now at Melbourne, "The Bathers" (1908), and "Holiday in Essex" (1910). Lambert was interested in the great men of the past and his work at this period was influenced to some extent by Velasquez and Manet. He was working very hard varying his painting with teaching at Brangwyn's London school of art. He exhibited with the International Society and the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, and in 1911 was awarded a silver medal at the Exposicion Internacional de Arte at Barcelona, for his painting "The Sonnet". He was making a reputation as a portrait painter when the war broke out. He reported himself at Australia House, but was informed that if he wished to join the A.I.F. he should do so through a recruiting office in Australia. Later on, after a period of training, he was appointed a divisional works officer in Wales, and was sent to superintend timber-getting there. He did his work with great efficiency. Towards the end of 1917 he was approached on behalf of the Canadian War Memorials Fund and was offered an artist's commission. He was told that John, Cameron, and Orpen would be his brother artists. It is a tribute to Lambert's reputation that he should have been joined with three such distinguished painters. He had, however, been previously in touch with the Australian authorities, and in December 1917 became one of their war artists. He arrived in Egypt in January 1918 and on 12 February in a letter to his wife he mentioned that he had dispatched 23 drawings and 11 paintings to Australia House. He was to do an enormous amount of work in the next five years, of which some 250 examples are at the war museum at Canberra.
Lambert returned to England in August 1919. He shortly afterwards obtained additional war commissions, and Algernon Talmage R.A. offered him the use of his country house in Cornwall. He completed there "The Beersheeba Charge" and "The Battle of Romani" but he felt he could do the work better in Australia. He sailed about the beginning of 1921 and soon after his arrival in Melbourne had a one man show at the Fine Art Society gallery which was very successful. On 29 June he was officially welcomed by the Society of Artists at Sydney, whose scholarship he had won 20 years before. But he revolted from the well-meant kindness of his friends, it was pleasant to talk but he had work to do. He took up sculpture and began working on a sketch design for the Port Said memorial, and also various portrait commissions in oil. He was disappointed at not winning the competition for the Port Said memorial, but he had contributed to this failure by making a design which admittedly could not be completed for the amount allowed. His disappointment was mitigated to some extent by his obtaining a sculpture commission for the Geelong grammar school war memorial. In 1922 he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy. In 1924 he had a temporary break down in health caused by overwork, he had found it difficult to obtain suitable assistance. For his next important commissions the "Unknown Soldier" and the Henry Lawson memorial he was able to get the help of Arthur Murch, who with George Perugia, a skilled caster, lightened his burdens very much. He was not helped by the well-meant advice of members of the Lawson committee, who however later on expressed their pleasure in the dignity and power of his conception. Under medical advice he was restricting the number of hours worked each day. The Lawson group was finally completed, and on 25 March 1930 it was shown to a gathering of his friends in his studio. Then followed reaction. He went away to the country for rest and change but little improvement followed. On 14 April in writing to his wife he mentioned that he had been "warned off riding and any exercise whatever . . . It was Lawson 'done it'". He died suddenly on 28 May 1930. He was survived by his wife and two sons. The elder, Maurice, born in Paris in 1901, well known as a sculptor, is represented at the Victoria and Albert museum and in the Tate gallery. The younger Constant, a composer and conductor, was in 1938 musical director of the Vic-Wells ballet in London.
Lambert was tall, athletic, a good boxer in his youth, fair, with a reddish beard. He had a slightly theatrical manner and would probably have made a good actor had he chosen that art. When he took part in a pageant which included some professionals, one of them said, "what a Mercutio he would have made!" He was fond of music and had a good light baritone voice. He was sometimes accused of posing but this was only self-protection. In reality he was a highly nervous man who lived only for his art. His paintings sometimes suggest an easy mastery of his materials, but though he could on occasions work quickly nobody could have been more painstaking. Sometimes he would spend the whole of a sitting on painting the hands. The war broke out just as he was coming into prominence in England, otherwise he would have gained greatly in public appreciation, he had already gained the approval of his fellow artists. He could appreciate and rejoice in the work of other artists, and his placing the name of his assistant Arthur Murch with his own on the statue of the unknown soldier, was a gesture that might well be imitated by other sculptors. He ranks among the greatest artists of the Australian school both in painting and sculpture. He is well represented in the Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide galleries, in addition to the war museum at Canberra.
Amy Lambert, Thirty Years of an Artist's Life; A. Jose and others, The Art of George W. Lambert; James MacDonald, The Art and Life of George W. Lambert; personal knowledge.
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LANDSBOROUGH, WILLIAM (c. 1825-1886),explorer,[ also refer to William LANDSBOROUGH page at Project Gutenberg Australia]
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was the third son of the Rev. David Landsborough, naturalist and writer. He was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, about the year 1825, came to Australia when a young man, and took up land in the New England district of New South Wales. The country was unsuitable for sheep and Landsborough was obliged to abandon it and find employment. When gold was discovered in 1851, Landsborough went to the diggings and had some success. He was on the land again in 1853 in Queensland, and in 1856 going farther north found fine pastoral country at the head of the Thomson River. Bad seasons, however, resulted in his losing all his pastoral interests in 1860. He did some exploring, and traced the Gregory and Herbert rivers to their sources, and in August 1861 was placed in charge of an expedition to search for Burke (q.v.) and Wills (q.v.), starting from the Gulf of Carpentaria. His vessel went ashore on the way but was refloated, and on 1 October the party of four whites and four aborigines arrived at the mouth of the Albert River with 25 out of their 30 horses. Landsborough started on 16 November in the direction of Central Mount Stuart, but little water could be found and, deciding to return, he arrived at his depot towards the end of January 1862. On 10 February he started his journey to the south and was fortunate in finding well-grassed country. In the middle of March he was following the Flinders, but finding he was getting too far to the east, struck south to the Barcoo, known lower down as Cooper's Creek. Stores began to run short and had Landsborough known that Howitt (q.v.) had reserve stores at Burke's depot on Cooper's Creek he would have made for it. He decided to go to the south and on 21 May arrived at the Messrs Williams' station about 800 miles north of Melbourne. Obtaining provisions the party set out for the Darling some 200 miles distant, from it they went to Menindie and thence to Melbourne. In the following November Landsborough was presented with a service of plate valued at £500, and subsequently visiting India and Europe the Royal Geographical Society presented him with a gold watch for finding a practicable route from the north to the south of Australia.
After an absence of two years Landsborough returned to Australia and in 1865 became a member of the Queensland legislative council for one session. Towards the end of that year he was appointed police magistrate for the district of Burke. Finding Burketown extremely unhealthy he made Sweers Island his headquarters and from there did much local exploring. In June 1872, he was made inspector of brands for the Moreton district and held this position for the remainder of his life. A few years before his death the Queensland parliament voted him £2000 for his services as an explorer, and with this he purchased a pastoral property at Caloundra where he spent any time he could spare from his duties. He died there on 16 March 1886. He married a daughter of Captain Rennie who died from fever contracted at Burketown.
Landsborough, who was survived by a family of children, was a brave and capable pioneer and explorer. It has been suggested that he gave up his search for Burke and Wills too early, but some members of his party had fallen sick and he was running short of food.
The Brisbane Courier, 17 March 1886; J. H. Heaton, Australian Dictionary of Dates; Ed. by J. S. Laurie, Landsborough's Exploration of Australia; Journal of Landsborough's Expedition; William Howitt, The History of Discovery in Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand, vol. II.
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LANE, WILLIAM (1861-1917),social reformer, |
was born at Bristol, England, on 6 September 1861. His father was Protestant Irish and worked in a nursery, his mother was English. When Lane was born his father was earning a miserable wage, but later on his circumstances improved and he became an employer of labour. The boy was educated at Bristol grammar school and showed ability, but he was sent early to work as an office boy. His mother died when he was 14, and at 16 he went to America and supported himself doing odd jobs. In Canada he became a reporter at the age of 20. He married before he was 21 Annie Macguire and went to Australia soon afterwards. Between 1883 and 1885 he began working on the Brisbane Courier and the Observer, an evening paper with radical tendencies; there was then no Labour party. Lane had much influence in forming the Brisbane Trades and Labour Council, and soon 17 unions were affiliated. His "Labour Notes" in the Observer were read all over Queensland, and he used his column to advocate settling on the land as a remedy for social problems. In 1887 he started the Boomerang and emphasized the necessity for land reform. He created a sensation by persuading the premier Sir Samuel Griffith (q.v.) to write an article for his Christmas Boomerang, which said among other things that the main remedy for social ills was the recognition that the worker was entitled to an adequate and fair proportion of the new wealth produced by his labour. "It appears to follow that it is the duty of the state to undertake the task of insisting upon a fair division of the products of labour between the possessor of the raw material and the producer." Lane at this stage had been much influenced by Henry George, but it was not long before he made the transition to socialism. His form of government had, however, no place for coloured races, and he took a strong stand on the Chinese question, then a subject of agitation. Lane's chief fear was of course the possible introduction of a low standard of living. His paper became a great influence in Queensland, and Lane made many friends, not only in the labour ranks but also among highly placed people who held democratic or socialistic opinions. He was making an income of £600 a year as a journalist at the end of 1889, when the proposal to found a Labour paper was mooted. By March 1890 he had sold the Boomerang and taken a little cottage so that he might be able to live on his salary of three pounds a week as editor of the Worker. Lane wrote a large part of it himself, but among the writers of verse were Henry Lawson (q.v.), Francis Adams (q.v.), and John Farrell (q.v.). The success of the paper was immediate. It was read more and more widely, but Lane was still not content. He assisted in organizing the unionists, he founded debating societies, hundreds of pamphlets were written and distributed, and all the time his remarkable personality was drawing the workers to him so that "he succeeded in establishing the best organized band of workers in Australia".
Long years of strikes and industrial combat followed. By both sides Lane was regarded as the force behind the movement. On the whole he was a restraining influence, though he felt that a time always arrives "where tolerance of a wrong becomes itself a wrong, and where those alone have rights who dare to maintain them". In 1892, under the name of John Miller, he published his novel The Working Man's Paradise, an interesting statement of the socialistic position. But he felt that the movement had reached a stage when the difficulties would tend to increase and progress slow down. For a long time the possibility of founding a socialistic community had been discussed and Lane sent a friend, A. Walker, to South America to investigate the possibility of finding suitable land there. He wanted to prove that socialism was practicable; he had complete faith in his fellow-countrymen, and believed that they could succeed though similar ventures in the past had failed. The New Australia Co-operative Settlement Association was founded to which every male member had to contribute at least £60. Lane himself gave £1000, others contributed up to £1500, and in a short time it possessed a capital of £30,000. It was decided to start in South America rather than in Australia, because there they would be away from capitalistic surroundings, and would be freer to shape their own destinies. The financial depression was causing much unemployment in Australia and it was easy to believe that conditions might be better in some other part of the world. A ship, the Royal Tar, was purchased and fitted up, but there were delays, and it is not unlikely that the seeds of future trouble were sown while the members were waiting in uncomfortable conditions in Sydney. In the face of many difficulties the ship sailed on 17 July 1893.
The Royal Tar arrived at Monte Video on 13 September. There had been a good deal of grumbling and fault-finding on the voyage, but Lane had kept a tight hand on the members and was already being called a despot by some of them. The party transhipped to a smaller vessel and after travelling 1200 miles up the River La Plata they reached the site of New Australia on 4 October. Lane was given the powers of a magistrate by the government of Paraguay. The settlers stated their preference for particular kinds of work, their foremen were elected by ballot, and all set to work making adobe huts, clearing the land, cultivating vegetable gardens, and doing other work necessary in a new settlement. A few were early discouraged and departed, and just before Christmas 1893 a serious storm arose. Three men went for an outing to a neighbouring village and returned drunk. All had agreed to be teetotallers and Lane insisted on the expulsion of the three men for "persistent violation of the clause . . . relating to liquor drinking". Some of their friends stood by the men, but Lane brought Paraguayan soldiers to the settlement and his orders were obeyed. Factions began to spring up, work was neglected, there was a feeling that their leader had been unduly harsh, and there was much bickering and arguing. Another body of settlers arrived in March 1894 under the leadership of Gilbert Casey who soon was the leader of the insurgents. The two men talked the problems over but could not come to a compromise. Lane decided to leave and start a fresh colony, and 45 adults and 12 children went with him. They took with them a proportion of the implements and a few cattle. Those who remained gradually developed individualism, some prospered, and some returned to Australia. Lane and his followers travelled about 20 miles to a river ford called Paso Cosme and camped in tents. An attempt was made to get a further grant of land without success, but eventually some land was purchased. A friend gave them £150, belongings were sold, and the new settlement, started with a capital of £400, was named Cosme after their camping place, though it was some distance away. By working 10 hours a day for six months a clearing was made and planted with maize and beans. Gradually their stores were consumed, and in January 1895 for a fortnight there was no food but beans. Everyone worked without complaint and in complete comradeship.
Lane's brother John said that in spite of the privations it was the happiest time of his life. "There seemed to be absolutely no such thing as complaint, ill-nature or ill-feeling," said Mary Gilmore, afterwards to become famous as an Australian poet. But it was a constant struggle against nature, and it took them all their time to keep the 100 acres that had been cleared free of weeds and forest growths. Slowly the conditions improved. New members joined and others left. In September 1896 Lane went to England and organized a party of between 40 and 50 people, but the English recruits usually found the climate too hot, and the diet too monotonous. Lane had more than one illness and his wife also became ill largely as a result of worry. At the fifth annual meeting of the colony in 1899 he decided not to stand for office, and on 2 August 1899 he left the settlement. He was only 38 years old but his energy was exhausted. He became an honorary member of the community and determined to earn money and pay off the settlement's debts. He also set himself to repay all who had left Cosme and claimed amounts they had originally paid into the funds. He was still doing this at the time of his death. His brother John Lane remained at Cosme until May 1904 when the numbers had fallen from 131 in 1897 to 69, of whom only 33 were adults. That was the end of Cosme as a communist colony.
After leaving Cosme Lane went to England and then to New Zealand, arriving late in 1899. He was appointed editor of the Australian Worker, Sydney, in January, 1900, but resigned in the following May. He had a wife and several children to support, so he went back to New Zealand, and, after a few weeks on the Wellington Post, joined a Conservative paper, the New Zealand Herald, at Auckland as leader writer. In 1906 he was largely instrumental in founding the National Defence League, he also advocated compulsory military training in New Zealand, and he was heart and soul with Britain when the 1914-18 war came. He had been editor of the New Zealand Herald for nearly four years when he died on 26 August 1917. His wife survived him with a son and five daughters. Another son was killed at Gallipoli.
Lane was under medium height, of frail physique, and slightly lame from birth. He was completely altruistic and unselfish, and no man had higher ideals. His idealism, however, was not backed by a strong business sense, there was unnecessary muddling before the first party sailed for South America, and when he was given full authority there was a lack of tact in exercising it. But the cause of the failure lay deeper than that. His enthusiasm could so inspire his followers that they could sell all they had and put it into the common pool, but it could not give them new natures to enable them to bear patiently with one another in spite of hardships, monotony, unsuitable food, and the petty jealousies and rancours that infect people thrown much together without pleasurable distractions. The constant strain injured Lane's health and broke his spirit. What had seemed the most important thing in the world had proved a failure. He tried to put it out of his mind for the rest of his life, but occasionally his early hopes would rise again; in August 1914 he wrote: "We shall root out the slum and the slum conditions. We shall see that no child lacks in a civilization bursting with riches." Personally he retained his old charm and gave freely to all who needed sympathy and kindness, work or money. He was still a delightful talker, but could never be persuaded to speak of his South American experiences, and no one will ever know for certain what were his innermost thoughts during the last 18 years of his life. He was the greatest man in the early days of the Labour movement in Australia, and if his Utopia failed it failed largely for reasons he had no power to control.
Two of Lane's brothers, John and E. H. Lane, were connected with Cosme. Both were alive in 1938, still convinced communists; they had left Cosme in 1904 because they considered that communist ideals were no longer being carried out. E. H. Lane, "Jack Cade", had a long connexion with the Labour party in Australia, always as one of the militants, and in 1939 published Dawn to Dusk Reminiscences of a Rebel.
Lloyd Ross, William Lane and the Australian Labour Movement; Stewart Grahame, Where Socialism Failed; A. St. Ledger, Australian Socialism; C. A. Bernays, Queensland Politics During Sixty Years; The New Zealand Herald, Auckland, 27 August 1917.
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LANG, JOHN (1817-1864),first native-born Australian novelist, |
was born at Parramatta, probably in 1817. He was educated at Sydney College, and is mentioned in the chapter "My School Days" in Rolf Boldrewood's In Bad Company and Other Stories. Lang could hardly, however, have been at the school with T. A. Browne ("Rolf Boldrewood") (q.v.), as Browne was not born until 1826. Lang went to Cambridge in 1838 and after qualifying as a barrister returned to Australia. In 1842 at a public meeting he seconded a motion proposed by W. C. Wentworth (q.v.), that the Crown be petitioned to grant the colony a representative assembly. A few months later he went to India and was successful as a barrister. He became a journalist and in 1845 established a paper, the Mofussilite, at Meerut. He also wrote some novels which appeared serially in the Mofussilite and in Fraser's Magazine. These began to be published in book form in 1853, The Wetherbys and Too Clever by Half appearing in that year, followed by Too Much Alike (1854), The Forger's Wife (1855), Captain Macdonald (1856), Will he Marry Her (1858), The Ex-Wife (1858), My Friend's Wife (1859), The Secret Police (1859), and Botany Bay; or True Stories of the Early Days of Australia (1859). Some of these were very popular and were often reprinted, the twelfth edition of Too Clever by Half appearing in 1878. Botany Bay has been reprinted several times, sometimes under the titles of Clever Criminals, or Remarkable Convicts. Fisher's Ghost reprints 10 of the 13 stories of Botany Bay. Lang also published Geraldine, A Ballad in 1854, and in 1859 Wanderings in India and other Sketches reprinted from Household Words. He visited London in 1859, and was for a short time at Calcutta where he issued the Optimist. He died at Mussoorie, India, on 20 August 1864.
Author's preface to Botany Bay; Rolf Boldrewood, In Bad Company, p. 365; The Dictionary of Indian Biography; Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography; E. Morris Miller, Australian Literature; British Museum Catalogue.
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LANG, JOHN DUNMORE (1799-1878),politician, miscellaneous writer, and early clergyman, |
was born at Greenock, Scotland, on 24 or 25 August 1799, the son of William Lang and his wife, Mary Dunmore. Both sides of the family came of farming stock. He was educated at the parish school and entered Glasgow university while still in his thirteenth year. He graduated M.A. in 1820, in the same year was licensed to preach, and five years later received the degree of D.D. His younger brother had emigrated to Australia in 1821, and his report of the conditions stirred the imagination of the young clergyman who decided to start a Presbyterian church in Australia. On 14 October 1822 he sailed for Australia, paying all his own expenses, arrived at Sydney on 23 May 1823, and very soon after gathered together a congregation and obtained the use of a hall from the government. He also set to work to obtain subscriptions to build a church, and the foundation-stone of Scots Church was laid on 1 July 1824. In August Lang voyaged to England and on his arrival interviewed Earl Bathurst, the secretary of state for the colonies who directed that one-third of the estimated cost of the church should be advanced by the treasury and that Lang should be paid a salary of £300 a year. The church was opened on 16 July 1826, and Lang continued to be its minister until his death more than 50 years later. He was a born fighter, and, having been refused a licence to solemnize marriages, put an advertisement in the Sydney Gazette stating that he would solemnize marriages by banns, and challenged anyone to show that such marriages were against the law. The authorities came to their senses and Lang was given his licence.
In 1830 Lang paid his second visit to England. He had endeavoured before he left to found a Presbyterian high school, but was unable to enlist the sympathies of the governor, Sir Ralph Darling (q.v.). In England Lord Goderich, secretary of state for the colonies, not only agreed to authorize an advance of £3500 for the establishment of the college, but also agreed that £1500 of this sum might be used to convey a party of workmen and their families to Sydney. In 1831 Lang returned to Australia with 140 emigrants, chiefly Scotch mechanics and their families. The understanding was that the cost of their passages would be repaid out of their earnings. On the voyage out Lang married his cousin, Wilhelmina Mackie, at the Cape of Good Hope. The experiment of bringing out the mechanics was a great success, but Lang imprudently raised hostility by writing a letter to Lord Goderich suggesting that the land granted to the Church of England authorities was not being put to its proper use, and that it should be sold and the proceeds devoted to the encouragement of emigration. Several people as a consequence refused their assistance in building his college, and he had to make personal sacrifices including the selling of his home to meet his responsibilities. The school was opened in 1832 under the name of the Australian College. Lang was appointed principal without salary, but the school had a chequered existence until it was closed in 1854. Its scheme was too ambitious for the circumstances of the time, and its rigid sectarianism did not help it to attain complete success.
In 1833 Lang again went to England and during the voyage wrote his An Historical and Statistical Account of New South Wales, which was published in London in 1834 and subsequently ran into four editions, the last of which appeared in 1875. He returned to Sydney in 1834 and in the following year started a weekly newspaper the Colonist. Lang was nothing if not outspoken and fought more than one libel action with success, acting as his own advocate. In the same year he opposed the appropriation of the land fund for police and gaol establishments, and powerfully contended that the money should be spent on encouraging immigration. In 1836 and 1839 he again visited England and did valuable work in advocating the sending of suitable colonists to Australia. In 1842 he was in conflict with the synod of the Presbyterian Church in Australia, and was deposed from the ministry, a deposition which was confirmed by the presbytery of Irvine in Scotland. Lang again went to Great Britain and had the Church court decisions rescinded, and returned to Sydney fully accredited as an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland. In 1843 he was elected as a representative for Port Phillip in the newly established legislative council. The Port Phillip district was becoming prosperous, and though it contributed much revenue to the government, the public expenditure was in no way in proportion. Lang became a most active representative and in 1844 brought forward a motion for its separation from New South Wales. In spite of his eloquent speech, his only supporters were the other representatives of Port Phillip and Robert Lowe (q.v.). It took much agitation before separation was finally achieved in 1851. He also with Lowe took a prominent part in the education controversy. He had been strongly opposed to Lord Stanley's Irish National System, but better acquaintance with its working made a convert of him, and he moved the adoption of the report of Lowe's select committee, which had recommended it. The motion was carried but the governor, Sir George Gipps, (q.v.) vetoed it. In 1846 Lang again went to Europe hoping to have emigration to Moreton Bay encouraged. He was full of the idea that there were great possibilities in cotton-growing in Queensland in addition to the production of sugar, and lectured extensively on the subject in England. Excellent cotton has since been grown in Australia, but it has never become a great industry. His work drew much attention to colonization, and he also was able to give evidence against the continuance of transportation. He spoke eloquently against it after his return, and during the agitation in 1849 and 1850 was elected to the council by a large majority over his pro-transportation opponent. When the council met, Lang moved for a select committee to inquire into charges made against him in connexion with his bringing emigrants to Australia under the land order system. He had enemies in the council who took the opportunity to pass a resolution condemning his conduct. Lang announced his intention of resigning, but a largely attended public meeting passed resolutions condemning the action of the council in passing its resolution without going into the evidence, and Lang retained his seat. He retaliated by publishing details of the careers of his opponents, and one of them prosecuted him for criminal libel. He was found guilty, sentenced to four months' imprisonment and fined £100. The amount of the fine was collected by public subscriptions of one shilling each, and at the election of 1851 Lang was elected for Sydney at the head of the poll. He resigned soon afterwards, paid his seventh visit to England, and returning to Australia was elected for a Queensland constituency in 1854 and worked for separation from New South Wales. In 1859 he was elected to the assembly at the head of the poll for West Sydney, and held the seat until 1869 when he retired. In December 1872 the jubilee of his ministry at Scots' church was celebrated, and in 1873 he was elected moderator of the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church in New South Wales. In the same year he made his ninth and last voyage to England, to see the fourth edition of his Historical and Statistical Account of New South Wales through the press. He died on 8 August 1878 and was survived by his wife, a son and two daughters. He was given a public funeral. There is a statue of him in Wynyard Square, Sydney.
Dr Lang was over six feet in height, burly, but suggesting great energy. He feared no one and by word and deed made many enemies. He was a masterful man and difficult to work with, but underlying everything was an immense enthusiasm and a passion for action. At times he appeared to be narrow and bigoted, especially in his views on the Roman Catholic Church, but even his own church was not spared if he thought it in the wrong. In controversy his strong feelings led to his being sometimes unjust, but in his private life he was kindly and full of a practising benevolence. He was a fine orator with the fault of spending too much time in the opening up of the subject, but once fully launched his speaking was characterized by great power and earnestness, and the quaintness and humour of his illustrations were often found to be irresistible. In politics he was never in office, but his long career was characterized by a consistent struggle for the establishment of better educational facilities, and the general advancement of the people. His greatest achievement was his immigration work, for which he made voyage after voyage and worked and spoke with immense effect. It is true that in his dealings with the English authorities he was not always tactful or even prudent, but his bringing of artisans of good character to Sydney supplied a real need and had a distinct effect on the development of the colony. His fine intellect was fortified with much reading, and he did an immense amount of literary work. His one volume of verse, Aurora Australis, published in 1826 and reprinted with additions in 1873, is largely religious verse not much better or worse than most work of this kind. In his secular poems he occasionally touches the edge of poetry. His most important book was his Historical and Statistical Account of New South Wales, which has valuable qualities, marred too often by personal bias. Among his other works are: View of the Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation, (1834, 2nd ed. enlarged 1877), Transportation and Colonization (1837), New Zealand in 1839 (1839), Religion and Education in America (1840), Cooksland in North-Eastern Australia (1847), Phillipsland (1847), Freedom and Independence for the Golden Lands of Australia (1852), 2nd ed. 1857, Queensland Australia (1861), 2nd ed. 1864, The Coming Event: or Freedom and Independence for the Seven United Provinces of Australia (1870).
A. Mackay, Melbourne Review, October 1878; The Sydney Morning Herald, 8 August 1878; T. Tait, John Dunmore Lang; A. C. Child, Journal and Proceedings Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. XXII, pp. 69, 208, 298; Historical Records of Australia, ser. I, vols. XIV to XX, XXIII, XXIV; J. D. Lang, An Historical and Statistical Account of New South Wales.
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LAPÉROUSE, JEAN FRANCOIS GALAUP, COMTE DE (1741-1788),explorer,[ also refer to Comte de LAPÉROUSE page at Project Gutenberg Australia]
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was born at Albi, France, on 23 August 1741. His name is usually spelt La Pérouse, but Ernest Scott has pointed out that Lapérouse and later members of his family wrote it as one word. In November 1756 Lapérouse entered the French marine service as a royal cadet, and for the next 30 years served in many ships, fought in many sea actions, and gained a very high reputation as an officer. In 1785 he was selected by Louis XVI to make a voyage of discovery in the South Seas, in charge of two ships of the navy, La Boussole and L'Astrolabe. The king had been much interested in the voyages of Cook (q.v.), and felt that a French expedition might make further discoveries of great importance. Lapérouse had a personal interview with the king and was given elaborate instructions, with, however, power to modify them should that be necessary. The expedition sailed on 1 August 1785, rounded Cape Horn in January 1786, sailed up the Chile coast and visited Easter Island in April, and the Sandwich Islands in May. The two ships then sailed north to Alaska, then down the coast to California, and then almost due west to Macao on the coast of China, which was reached in January 1787. After a visit to the Philippines a course was set north to Formosa, up the coast of China, round the north of Japan and then generally south or south-east to the Navigator Islands. At one of these islands de Langle, the commander of the Astrolabe, and all of his crew who had gone ashore to obtain fresh water, were murdered by natives in December 1787. Twenty others were severely wounded, one of whom Père Receveur, priest and naturalist, died of his injuries at Botany Bay and was buried there. After the massacre the ships sailed to the south-west, and arrived off the east coast of Australia practically at the same time as the First Fleet under Phillip (q.v.). The French ships sailed into Botany Bay on the morning of 26 January 1788. Happy relations were established between the French and English officers, but there is no evidence to show that Lapérouse and Phillip ever met. After a stay of a few weeks the French ships sailed from Botany Bay on 10 March 1788, and nothing more was heard of them for many years. In 1791 two ships under Admiral D'Entrecasteaux were sent to search for tidings of them. Esperance Bay in Western Australia is named after one of these ships, D'Entrecasteaux Channel to the south of Tasmania is named after the admiral. Their search yielded nothing. Other ships afterwards looked for relics of Lapérouse, but it was not until 1826 that Captain Dillon of the St Patrick found European articles on the island of Tucopia. He made inquiries and learned that two ships, evidently those of the Lapérouse expedition, had been wrecked in the Vanikoro cluster of islands, some of the crew had been murdered when they got ashore, others built a boat out of the fragments and sailed away never to be heard of again, a few remained on the island until they died, but there is no information about the fate of the leader.
Lapérouse was a great navigator and a great man, accomplished, humane, and able. He married Louise Eleonora Broudon two years before he sailed on his last voyage. She survived him but there was no child of the marriage. A monument to Lapérouse was erected by Baron de Bougainville at Botany Bay in 1825, and there is a statue in bronze in the Place Lapérouse at Albi.
Sir Ernest Scott, Lapérouse, and Journal and Proceedings Royal Australian Historical Society, vol, XIII, pp. 273-88; Sir William Dixson, Journal and Proceedings Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. XXI, pp. 361-90; Historical Records of Australia, ser. I, vol. I. There are also many works on Lapérouse in French.
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LA TROBE, CHARLES JOSEPH (1801-1875),lieutenant-governor of Victoria, |
was born in London on 20 March 1801. His father, the Rev. C. I. La Trobe, was a Moravian minister who married a Miss Sims of Yorkshire, and their son was originally educated for the ministry. He, however, did much travelling in Europe, possibly as a tutor, and in 1829 published his first travel book, The Alpenstock. This was followed by The Pedestrian (1832), The Rambler in North America (1835), and The Rambler in Mexico (1836). While on the way to America with the young Count de Pourtales, to whom La Trobe appears to have been either a tutor or mentor he met Washington Irving and the three afterwards travelled through America together. La Trobe's account of these travels is mentioned above, Irving's was published under the title A Tour on the Prairies. In this book he gives a revealing description of La Trobe: "Another of my fellow-travellers was Mr L.; an Englishman by birth but descended from a foreign stock, and who had all the buoyancy and accommodating spirit of a native of the Continent. Having rambled over many countries, he had become, to a certain degree, a citizen of the world, easily adapting himself to every change. He was a man of a thousand occupations: a botanist, a geologist, a hunter of beetles and butterflies, a musical amateur, a sketcher of no mean pretensions, in short, a complete virtuoso; added to which, he was a very indefatigable, if not always a very successful, sportsman. Never had a man more irons in the fire; and, consequently, never was a man more busy or more cheerful." After the conclusion of his American journeys La Trobe was in 1837 sent to the West Indies to report to the British government on the future education of the recently emancipated slaves. Apparently this report gave satisfaction, and in February 1839 he received the appointment of superintendent of the Port Phillip district. He proceeded to Sydney, arrived on 26 July, and stayed about two months; as he had had no experience of administrative work it was no doubt thought wise to give him some instruction in the procedure to be followed. He arrived at Melbourne on 1 October and received an enthusiastic reception. His salary was £800 a year, but this was soon raised to £1500. He had brought with him a house in sections, which he erected on the 12½ acres of land on the fringe of the city now called Jolimont. He bought this at auction at the upset price of £20 an acre. The residents of Melbourne had agreed among themselves not to bid against the superintendent, and this reaching the ears of Governor Gipps (q.v.) at Sydney he was somewhat disturbed about it. La Trobe, however, was able to convince him that he had acted quite innocently in the matter.
It is a little difficult to realize the primitive state of Melbourne when La Trobe arrived. Streets were marked out but they were quite unmade, and indeed in some cases were little better than bush tracks with stumps of trees in the middle of them. One of his earliest acts was to set some labourers to work improving these conditions. The population was about 3000 and was rapidly growing, there was no drainage, and health conditions were very bad. La Trobe found it necessary to appoint a board of health to inquire into the causes of the heavy mortality of the town, and following that steps were taken to form a municipal corporation. Everything had to be referred to Sydney, where local affairs often appeared to be more pressing. La Trobe himself had comparatively little power, and in spite of his invariable courtesy he was not long in losing his first popularity. But he had really been doing very good work, for finding that his many requisitions were receiving insufficient attention, he had persuaded Gipps to come to Melbourne in October 1841 and form his own opinion of the position. This had had a good effect, but a movement in favour of separation from New South Wales rapidly developed, and finding La Trobe insufficiently sympathetic, the Melbourne city council in 1848 sent a petition to the Queen praying for his removal from his post as superintendent. This was backed up by a resolution carried at a meeting of 3000 persons. The request was refused, and the colonial office showed its confidence in La Trobe by appointing him lieutenant-governor when separation was at last effected. The influx of population caused by the discovery of gold was the cause of fresh troubles to him, and he had problems of the most difficult character in connexion with the conflicting claims of the squatters and the immigrants. His hesitation concerning the best courses to be followed, led to much abuse of him by the press for which there was little warrant. Early in 1854 the Argus began to insert among its advertisements a notice "Wanted a Governor". La Trobe could stand the strain no longer, resigned his position, and left for England in May 1854. He had been administrator of the government for nearly 15 years, and had shared fully in the dissatisfaction which was the common fate of all early governors. Henceforth he lived a retired life in England. Made a C.B. in 1858, he succeeded in 1864 in obtaining a pension of £333 a year from the British government. He soon afterwards became blind and died at Litlington near Eastbourne on 2 December 1875. He was married twice (1) to Sophie de Mt Mollin who died in 1854 leaving three daughters and a son, and (2) to Susanne de Mauron, who survived him with two daughters. A granddaughter, La Baronne Godefroy de Blonay, presented a valuable collection of his papers to the public library at Melbourne in 1935.
La Trobe was a thoroughly amiable and kindly man, always courteous and conscientious in carrying out his duties. He was well educated and a capable writer, as his travel books show, and an excellent amateur draughtsman. A volume of scholarly verse, The Solace of Song, published anonymously in 1837 and sometimes attributed to him was not, however, his work, having been written by his brother, J. A. La Trobe. His private life was irreproachable, but his administrative work was bitterly criticized during the last few years of his office, and echoes of this will be found in writers on his period up to 30 years after his death. Later historians, however, have been able to realize the extreme difficulty of his position. He could do no more than pass on the sometimes premature demands of the Port Phillip residents, and then carry out his instructions. As a result he too often found himself between the hammer and the anvil. It is possible that he may have deferred too much to Sydney officials, but it is doubtful whether he could have effected much more than he did. He certainly acted with decision in twice preventing the landing of convicts, in 1849 and 1850. Melbourne owes much to him for his part in the founding of the public library, the university, and the Melbourne hospital. He encouraged from the beginning the formation of a reservoir to supply Melbourne with water, and he supported the setting aside of the land for the Botanical, Fitzroy, and other public gardens.
J. H. Heaton, Australian Dictionary of Dates; The Age, 8 April 1939; The Argus, 14 April 1934; A. Sutherland, Victoria and its Metropolis; Historical Records of Australia, ser. I, vols. XX to XXVI; Victoria the First Century; H. G. Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria; G. W. Rusden, The Discovery Survey and Settlement of Port Phillip; H. McCrae. Georgiana's Journal.
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LAWES, WILLIAM GEORGE (1839-1907),missionary, |
was born at Aldermaston Berkshire, England, on 1 July 1839. He was educated at a school connected with the Congregational Church at Mortimer West, and at 14 went to work at Reading. In 1858 the Rev. William Gill came to this town bringing with him a native from the island of Rarotonga. Lawes became much interested in missionary work, and offering himself to the London Missionary Society, was sent to Bedford to pursue his studies. He was ordained at Reading on 8 November 1860. He had been married about a fortnight before to Fanny Wickham, and on 23 November the young couple sailed in the John Williams for Savage Island by way of Australia. Sydney was left on 16 May 1861, and Savage Island was reached about three months later. The natives, once among the fiercest of savages, were now largely Christianized. Lawes soon learned the language and during his stay of 11 years his work was steadily successful. He translated portions of the scriptures into the Niue dialects, which were printed by the New South Wales auxiliary of the Bible Society.
In 1872 he went to Great Britain with his wife on furlough, and did a large amount of travelling and public speaking for the missions. He was sent to the New Guinea mission and in November 1874 a mission station was established at Port Moresby. The people were kindly disposed, but it was soon realized that the desire for teachers and missionaries was largely based on the hope of obtaining beads, tobacco, and food. Lawes philosophically observed that at the dawn of Christianity much better-informed people were no doubt attracted by the loaves and fishes. He went steadily on with his work, but malaria and other diseases took toll of native teachers he had brought with him, and there was little local food available. The coast as far as Milne Bay was explored, and portions of the interior were visited. Lawes began to reduce the local language to writing, and in 1877 published at Sydney Buka Kienana Levaleva Tuahia, a first school book in the language of Port Moresby. In 1885 he brought out Grammar and Vocabulary of Language spoken by Motu Tribe (3rd ed. 1896). From 1877 he was associated with James Chalmers (q.v.), and worked well with him. Chalmers was the more adventurous, Lawes more scholarly, and they made a good combination. When a British protectorate was proclaimed in November 1884, Lawes explained to the chiefs as well as he was able the significance of the ceremony. When he visited Australia in the following year he asked that the natives should be accepted as fellow subjects and fellow men. "Don't talk about them as 'niggers' or 'black fellows' but shake hands with them across the straits!" In 1891 Lawes spent six months in England seeing through the press his translation of the New Testament into Motu, and on his return spent some time travelling through Australia bringing the claims of the mission before the churches. He returned to Port Moresby in April 1893 and at the end of the following year removed to Vatorato, where a training college for teachers was established with Lawes in charge. He was in England when word came of the murder of Chalmers "his bosom friend and beloved brother" as he called him in a remarkable appeal for missions at a meeting held a few days later at the Albert Hall. "Chalmers and Tomkins must be avenged," said Lawes, "not by the burning down of homesteads but as the sainted Tamate would have it, by sending the army of Christian workers to win the tribes for Christ, and make it for ever impossible that such deeds should be perpetrated on their shores."
In 1906, after 44 years of continuous service, Lawes decided to retire. He arrived in Sydney in April 1906 and lived quietly, always interested in Papua as the part of New Guinea under the control of Australia was now called, and frequently preaching at various churches until his death on 6 August 1907. He was survived by his faithful wife and companion in all his labours, and three sons. He was given the honorary degree of D.D. by Glasgow university. In addition to the works mentioned Lawes was responsible for other translations into Motu, including Selections from Old Testament History, a hymn-book, a catechism with marriage and burial services and forms of prayer, and a geography and arithmetic book. The basis of his great success as a missionary was his belief that the work must be a mission of love and understanding. He was an ideal teacher, a skilful organizer, a fit complement of Chalmers. Together they did a great work for New Guinea and civilization. There is a stained glass window in memory of Lawes in Trinity Congregational Church, Reading.
J. King, W. G. Lawes of Savage Island and New Guinea; R. Lovett, James Chalmers, His Autobiography and Letters; The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 August 1907; The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 7 August 1907.
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LAWSON, ABERCROMBIE ANSTRUTHER (c. 1871-1927),botanist, |
fourth son of William Lawson, was born in Fife, Scotland, in or about the year 1871. He went to Glasgow University as a medical student, became interested in botany, and left Glasgow to continue his studies at the university of Berkeley, California. He graduated M.Sc. in 1893, and became an instructor in botany. He was a member of a scientific expedition to the Aleutian Islands, and later made further studies at Stanford and Chicago universities in the United States of America, and at Bonn in Germany. In 1907 he was appointed a lecturer in botany at the university of Glasgow. He carried out his official work there with success, and being allowed some time for research, he worked on the Pollen-mother cells of Coboea and of Gladiolus, which with some earlier work on spindle-formation, led to the "Memoirs on Synapsis, Nuclear Osmosis and Chromosome Reduction", which appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1911-12. In 1912 he was appointed the first professor of botany at the university of Sydney, and there he gradually built up a great botanical school in which both teaching and research were vigorously carried on. His early years in Sydney were of necessity largely given up to the organization of the school, and near the close of his life the details of the new botanical building occupied much of his time. But in between he was able to do valuable research work on the Australian flora. An important contribution to the knowledge of the Gymnosperms, "The Life-History of Bowenia a genus of Cycads endemic in Australasia", was published in 1926 in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Lawson had intended to have gathered together his results in a collective work upon the Coniferales, but he died following an operation on 26 March 1927, at the comparatively early age of 55. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1910 and was also awarded its Makdougall-Brisbane prize. Adelaide gave him the honorary degree of D.Sc. in 1926, and he was a selected candidate for the fellowship of the Royal Society, London, at the time of his death. It was not possible under the statutes of the society to confirm this election.
Lawson was of a somewhat reserved nature but he was personally much liked. Much of his research work was detailed and analytic rather than constructive, but it was excellent within its limits. With his school firmly established and in a beautiful new building, much valuable work might have been expected from him had he been given the normal span of life.
F. O. Bower, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1926-7, p. 374; The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 March 1927; Who's Who, 1926; Nature, vol. CXIX, pp. 509 and 753; Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, ser. A, vol. 117, p. 305; Calendar of the University of Sydney, 1928, p. 857.
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LAWSON, HENRY (1867-1922),short story writer and poet,[ also refer to Henry LAWSON page at Project Gutenberg Australia]
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was born in a tent near Grenfell, New South Wales, on 17 June 1867. His birth is officially registered as Henry Lawson, but his name has sometimes been given as Henry Herzberg Lawson, sometimes as Henry Archibald Lawson. In his books it appears simply as Henry, and his usual practice was to sign his name in that form. His father, Peter Hertzberg Larsen, was a Norwegian sailor, a well-informed and educated man, who had much appreciation of the poetry of the Old Testament, but had no faculty for writing. As it was known that Lawson's father's second name was Hertzberg it has been suggested that Archibald may have been a mistake for Hertzberg made at Henry's christening, but there appears to be no evidence that he was ever baptized. His father, having tried his fortunes on various goldfields, came to Pipeclay, now Eurunderee, New South Wales, and there met Louisa Albury (1848-1920), daughter of Henry Albury, a timber-getter. He married her on 7 July 1866, being then 32 years of age and his wife 18. She was to become a remarkable woman, who, after rearing a family, took a prominent part in the women's movements, and edited a women's paper called Dawn which lasted from May 1888 to July 1905. She published her son's first volume, and about the year 1904 brought out a volume of her own, Dert and Do, a simple story of about 18,000 words. In 1905 she collected and published her own verses, The Lonely Crossing and other Poems, the work in which is of more than average quality. She died on 12 August 1920, a woman of unusual character and ability, who probably exercised a strong influence on her son's literary work in its earliest days. Lawson believed that through his mother he inherited gypsy blood, but there is no evidence for this.
Peter Larsen was working at the diggings near Grenfell when Henry their first child was born, and apparently the family took the name of Lawson when Henry's birth was registered. The family soon returned to Eurunderee where the father took up a selection. The land was poor and little could be done with it, and as Henry grew up, like so many other bush children, he helped in the work; but, as he said in his autobiography, he "had no heart in it; perhaps I realized by instinct that the case was hopeless". Probably the strain of the hard life was partly responsible for his parents' married life becoming unhappy, but in the interview with Mrs Lawson, recorded on the Red Page of the Bulletin on 24 October 1896, she showed herself as a masterful woman with a strong prejudice against men in general, and one feels when reading it that even as a young woman she would probably have been difficult to live with. This is confirmed by private information from a relative of Mrs Lawson still alive at the time of writing. But the unhappiness of the family life re-acted on the child, and in his autobiography at the Mitchell library, Lawson said his home life "was miserably unhappy", and though he goes on to say, "there was no one to blame". the sketch in Triangles of Life, "A Child in the Dark and a Foreign Father", was in all probability founded on his own experience.
In 1876 a little school was opened at Eurunderee and on 2 October 1876 Lawson became a pupil. It was about this time that he began to be deaf, but his master John Tierney was kind and appears to have done his best for the shy sensitive boy. Later on he went to a Roman Catholic school at Mudgee about five miles away. Here again the master, a Mr Kevan, was good to Lawson and would sometimes talk to him about poetry. The boy was steadily reading Dickens and Marryat and such novels as Robbery under Arms and For the Term of his Natural Life, when they appeared as serials. An aunt gave him a volume of stories by Bret Harte which fascinated him and introduced him to a new world. These books no doubt helped to educate him for writing, for handicapped by his deafness he could learn little at school, he was no good at arithmetic, and never learned to spell.
When Henry was about 14 he left school and began working with his father who had got the contract to build a school at Canadian Lead. His childhood was now at an end. He had lived in poor country, where the selectors slaved for a wretched living, and his experiences were to colour the whole of his subsequent literary work. Some time after this his parents agreed to separate, the exact time is uncertain, but in 1884 Mrs Lawson and her family were living in Sydney. The house, however, seems to have been taken in the father's name as he appears in the Sydney Directory for both 1885 and 1886 as Peter Lawson, builder, 138 Phillip Street. Henry worked as a painter and at 17 years of age was earning thirty shillings a week. Though his hours were long he also worked at a night school, and twice entered for public examinations at the university of Sydney without success. He paid for his night-schooling himself, and when about 20 years old went to Melbourne and attended the eye and ear hospital there. But nothing could be done for him and he returned to Sydney. There he worked as a painter at the low wages of the time, saw something of the slums and how the poor lived, and "wished that he could write". He was working as a coach-painter's improver at five shillings a day when in June 1887 the Bulletin printed four lines of a poem he had submitted and advised him to "try again". In October his "Song of the Republic" was published in the Bulletin, and in the Christmas number two poems "Golden Gully" and "The Wreck of the Derry Castle" appeared. Lawson has told us with what excitement he opened this Bulletin and found his poems. Prefixed to the second was an editorial note:--"In publishing the subjoined verses we take pleasure in stating that the writer is a boy of 17 years, a young Australian, who has as yet had an imperfect education and is earning his living under some difficulties as a housepainter, a youth whose poetic genius here speaks eloquently for itself." Lawson was then 20 years of age, not 17, but the editor showed remarkable prescience in recognizing the poet's ability so early. Lawson's first story, "His Father's Mate", was published in the Bulletin for 22 December 1888 greatly to the pride of his father, who, however, died a few days later aged 54. Lawson in his autobiography said of him: "I don't believe that a kinder man in trouble, or a gentler nurse in sickness ever breathed. I've known him to work hard all day and then sit up all night by a neighbour's sick child." Though Lawson may have inherited his capacity for writing from his mother, he probably owed the love of humanity that illumines all his work to his father.
Lawson went to Albany, Western Australia, in 1889, but found conditions no better there, and was in Sydney again for most of 1890. He then obtained a position on the Brisbane Boomerang at £2 a week, but the paper stopped about six months later, and Lawson was back in Sydney again working at his trade for the usual low wages, writing a good deal for the socialistic press, as a rule without pay, and getting an occasional guinea from the Bulletin and smaller sums from Truth. In 1892 he did some writing for the Sydney Worker at twelve and sixpence a column, and about the end of that year went by train to western New South Wales and carried his swag for six months doing odd jobs. Much of his experience of this period was afterwards included in his writings. Towards the end of 1893 Lawson landed in Wellington, New Zealand, with one pound in his pocket, worked in a sawmill for a short period, and tried his hand at a variety of tasks. He then found his way to Sydney again hoping to get work on the Daily Worker, which, however, had stopped publication before he arrived. In 1894 his Short Stories in Prose and Verse was published by his mother, a poorly-printed little volume of 96 pages, which was favourably received but brought in little money. He had made a life-long friend in J. Le Gay Brereton (q.v.), who had been introduced to him by Mary Gilmore, and other friends of his early literary days were Victor Daley (q.v.), E. J. Brady, and F. J. Broomfield. In April 1896, while In the Days When the World was Wide was in the press, he married Bertha Marie Louise Bredt, and soon afterwards took her to Western Australia. In August While the Billy Boils, a collection of his short stories mostly from the Bulletin, was published, and when Lawson returned to Sydney from Western Australia shortly afterwards, he found that both of his books had been cordially received by the critics and were selling well. He next went to New Zealand, where he and his wife were for a time in charge of a Maori school. There he met Bland Holt (q.v.) the well-known actor, who suggested that he should write a play. The play was written though Lawson had no knowledge of the technique of play-writing. Holt gave him an advance against it, and took it away hoping he might knock it into shape, but nothing more was heard of it. In January 1899 an article by Lawson appeared in the Bulletin which stated that in 12 years he estimated that he had made a total of about £700 by his writings. This included the receipts from his first three books. He had returned to Sydney and made a new friend in the governor of New South Wales, Earl Beauchamp, who gave him the financial help that enabled him to go to England with his wife and two young children. They sailed from Sydney on 20 April 1900. In the same year his Verses Popular and Humorous, and a collection of prose stories On the Track and Over the Sliprails, were both published at Sydney.
Though it was not easy for either Lawson or his wife to fit themselves into the conventional pattern of the England of 1900, for a time everything went well. Blackwood and Sons took two books of prose for publication, The Country I Came From and Joe Wilson and his Mates, both of which appeared in 1901. Methuen and Company also took a book made up of prose and verse, Children of the Bush, which was published in 1902. Lawson stuck closely to his work at first, but for some time drink had been a temptation to him, and he began to have trouble with it again. His wife had a serious illness, both found the long winter months very trying, and both pined for the sunshine of Australia. They were glad to return to a little cottage at Manly before the end of 1902. But difficulties arose between husband and wife and they agreed to part. An account of their association, written by Mrs Lawson without rancour and with understanding of Lawson's temperament, will be found in Henry Lawson by his Mates.
At 35 years of age most of Lawson's best work was done. When I was King and other Verses was published in 1905, The Rising of the Court and other Sketches in Prose and Verse, and The Skyline Riders and other Verses in 1910, Triangles of Life and Other Stories, and For Australia and other Poems in 1913. My Army, O, My Army! was published in 1915, and reissued in England under the title of Song of the Dardanelles and other Verses in 1916. Various minor works, reprints, selections, and collected editions will be found listed in Miller's Australian Literature and Serle's Bibliography of Australasian Poetry and Verse. Lawson lived mostly in Sydney, but had a happy holiday in 1910 with his friend, T. D. Mutch, at the home of another friend, E. J. Brady, at Mallacoota, Victoria, and in 1917 Bertram Stevens (q.v.) and other friends arranged a deputation to the premier, W. A. Holman (q.v.), which resulted in Lawson being given a position at Leeton on the Yanco irrigation settlement. Lawson described it as the driest place he had ever been to, but his health improved very much while he was there. On his return to Sydney he reverted to his old habits, and became a rather pathetic though lovable figure in the streets of Sydney. He was only a shadow of his former self when he died on 2 September 1922. He was survived by his wife, a son and a daughter. He had a small allowance from his publishers and a small literary pension. That he did not lack friends may be gathered from the volume Henry Lawson by his Mates published nine years after his death. He was given a state funeral. A portrait by Longstaff (q.v.) is at the national gallery, Sydney, and there is a monument by Lambert (q.v.) in Hyde Park, Sydney, erected by public subscription.
Lawson was tall, spare, good looking in his youth, with remarkable eyes. He was shy, diffident and very sensitive, with great powers of attracting friends to him. A convinced socialist as a young man, he was always passionately concerned about the under dog. There has been much discussion about his place as a poet, and opinions have ranged between those of people who consider him to be no more than a mere verse-writer, and those who speak of him as "Australia's greatest poet". The truth lies between these extremes. No one can surely deny the title of poet to the author of "The Sliprails and the Spur", "Past Carin'", passages in "The Star of Australasia", "The Drover's Sweetheart" and that pathetic little poem of his later days "Scots of the Riverina". But a large proportion of his poetry is merely good popular verse. However, every writer is justified in being judged by his best work, and in virtue of his best work Lawson is a poet. There is no difficulty about his position as a prose-writer. His short stories are practically all based on his own experience, and that a proportion of them are gloomy should give no surprise to anyone familiar with the struggling lives of the men on the land in Lawson's youth. He had had little education, and no doubt his earliest efforts were sub-edited to some extent by Archibald and others. But fundamentally he was an artist, and his absolute sincerity and sympathy with his fellows counted for much. He had a quiet sense of humour, his pathos came straight from the heart, his gift of narration is unfailing. The combination of these qualities has given him the foremost place in Australian literature as a writer of short stories.
"Henry Lawson's Early Days", The Lone Hand, March 1908; The Bulletin, 21 January 1899, Geo. G. Reeve, Windsor and Richmond Gazette, 4 December 1931; Peter J. Lawson, ibid, 5 October 1928; Ed. by G. Mackaness, introduction to A Selection from the Prose Works of Henry Lawson, 1930; Henry Lawson, by his Mates; J. Le Gay Brereton, Knocking Round; E. Morris Miller, Australian Literature; H. M. Green, An Outline of Australian Literature; T. S. Browning, Henry Lawson Memories; D. McKee Wright, preface, Selected Poems of Henry Lawson; A. G. Stephens, Art in Australia, third series, No. 2; F. J. Broomfield, Henry Lawson and His Critics; Bertha Lawson, My Henry Lawson; private information.
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LAWSON, WILLIAM (1774-1850),explorer,[ also refer to William LAWSON page at Project Gutenberg Australia]
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was born in 1774 and came to Sydney, an ensign in the New South Wales Corps, in 1800. He was stationed at Norfolk Island between 1802 and 1805, was promoted to lieutenant in 1807, and at the time of the deposition of Bligh (q.v.) was made aide-de-camp to Major George Johnston (q.v.). He was sent to England at the time of Johnston's court-martial, but was soon allowed to return to Sydney and take up his military duties again. In May 1813 with G. Blaxland (q.v.) and W. Wentworth (q.v.) he shared in the discovery of a way across the Blue Mountains, a remarkable feat at the time, which had great consequences. Lawson was rewarded with a grant of 1000 acres of land, and he subsequently became one of the largest holders of land in Australia. He was made a magistrate and was appointed commandant at Newcastle, and in 1819 took up the same position at Bathurst. He did some exploring in 1821 and was the first to pass over the site of Mudgee. In 1835, he was then living at Prospect, he was in the list of persons proposed for selection as nominee members of the legislative council, but was not one of those selected. He was, however, one of the first elected members of the legislative council in 1843, and held his seat until 1848. He died at Prospect on 16 June 1850. He married and left descendants. There appears to be no evidence of importance for the suggestion that has been made, that Lawson was the real leader of the expedition across the mountains.
Historical Records of Australia, ser. I, vols. III, VI, VIII, X, XI, XIII, XVIII, XXIII, XXIV; Journal and Proceedings Royal Australian Historical Society, vols. XIX, p. 35, XXIII, p. 28, XXIV, pp. 246, 478; G. Blaxland, A Journal of a Tour of Discovery.
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LEA, ARTHUR MILLS (1868-1932),entomologist, |
was born at Sydney on 10 August 1868. He worked first for a firm of chartered accountants at Sydney but, having taken up entomology as a hobby, he joined the department of agriculture, New South Wales, in 1892 as assistant entomologist, and in 1895 was appointed government entomologist of Western Australia. In 1899 he transferred to a similar position in Tasmania, and did useful research work in connexion with the insect pests of fruit. He joined the South Australian museum as entomologist in 1911, and during his 21 years at the museum made his department a most important one. It was in a relatively poor condition when he took it over, but it was built up until there were more than 1,000,000 specimens in its cabinets. He lectured on forest entomology to students of the university of Adelaide, and on a variety of subjects to societies and scientific bodies. Inquiries from other states were frequently referred to him. He carried out an extensive investigation into insect pests in 1918-19 when the wheat stored in Australia on account of the war was being destroyed by weevils, and in 1924 spent a year in Queensland, Thursday Island, and the East Indies, studying methods of controlling the coconut moth, which was threatening the copra industry in Fiji. He found that a Trachinid fly was controlling a similar pest in Malaya and Java, which was brought to Fiji with successful results. Lea encouraged private workers in his field, and conducted a large correspondence dealing with specimens submitted, and inquiries made by farmers. In addition he was a prolific writer of papers, no fewer than 43 of these were printed in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia. He specialized on the Coleoptera, and his papers on them were a valuable contribution to the knowledge of the order. Several of these were published by the Entomological Society of London, and some of his work was printed in Sweden, Germany and Belgium. He gave much time to describing new species of insects, and at the time of his death had described nearly 5500. He died suddenly at Adelaide on 29 February 1932 leaving a widow and three daughters. He was a fellow of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, of the Royal Society of South Australia, of the Entomological Society of London, and was also a member of several other scientific societies.
Lea was a thoroughly amiable man of the finest character, and an untiring worker. A bibliography of his papers listing 281 items will be found in Records of the South Australian Museum, vol. IV, No. 4. These alone are a remarkable record as the work of one man. But apart from his papers Lea did most valuable practical work in relation to the control of pests both in Tasmania and South Australia.
H. M. Hale, Obituary and Bibliography of A. M. Lea; Records of the South Australian Museum, vol. IV, No. 4, 1932; Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, vol. LVI, p. 1; F. Erasmus Wilson, The Victorian Naturalist, May 1932, p. 15; The Advertiser, Adelaide, 1 March 1932; The Entomologists' Monthly Magazine, vol. LXVIII, p. 119; A. Musgrave, Bibliography of Australian Entomology (includes over 230 papers by Lea); The Australian Museum Magazine, 16 April 1932, p. 342.
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LEACH, JOHN ALBERT (1870-1929),ornithologist, |
son of W. Leach, was born at Ballarat on 19 March 1870. He was educated at the Creswick grammar school and the university of Melbourne, where he graduated B.Sc. and subsequently gained his doctorate for research in ornithology. Joining the education department he was a teacher for some time at schools in Gippsland where he began his study of bird life. He became an inspector of schools and towards the end of his life was assistant chief inspector of primary schools. He published in 1911 An Australian Bird Book, a most useful handbook with many illustrations in colour. This went into a seventh revised and enlarged edition in 1929. In 1922 he brought out Australian Nature Studies, a book which has been of the greatest use to organizers of nature study throughout Australia. He was also part author of a series of Federal Geography books, and did much work on the Official Checklist of the Birds of Australia second and revised edition published by the Royal Australasian Ornithologists' Union in September 1926. He was editor of the Emu for many years and also published a few pamphlets on nature study. He had two books in preparation on Australian natural history when he died at Melbourne on 3 October 1929. He married Emily Lamert Gillman, who survived him with a son and two daughters.
Leach was hard-working and conscientious, was a leading authority on Australian ornithology, and had great influence on the spread of nature study in Australia through his books and as a broadcaster.
R. H. Croll and Brooke Nicholls, The Emu, vol. XXIX, pp. 230-3; The Education Gazette, 22 October 1929, p. 262; The Argus and The Age, Melbourne, 4 October 1929.
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LEAKE, GEORGE (1856-1902),premier of Western Australia, |
a member of a well-known Western Australian family, was born at Perth in 1856. His grandfather, George Leake, came to Perth with the pioneers in 1829, and was chairman of directors of the Bank of Western Australia when it was founded in 1837. His uncle Sir Luke Samuel Leake (1828-86), became a member of the legislative council and was its speaker from 1870 until 1886, and his father, George Wall Leake (1826-95), also had a distinguished career. He became crown solicitor in 1860, acting attorney-general and a member of the executive and legislative councils, 1879-80, and police magistrate in 1881. On occasions he was acting puisne judge and acting chief justice. He was nominated to the new legislative council in 1890 and died in 1895. George Leake was educated at the Bishop's boys' school at Perth and at St Peter's College, Adelaide. He studied law, was admitted to the Western Australian bar in 1880, and three years later became crown solicitor. He was elected unopposed for Roebourne as a member of the legislative assembly in 1890 and was offered a position in the ministry formed by Forrest (q.v.). Leake, however, declined this and shortly afterwards resigned his seat. In June 1894 he was elected for Albany and in the following year was elected leader of the opposition. He was a leader in the federal movement, was president of the federal league of Western Australia, and represented that colony at the 1897 federal convention. He became a Q.C. in 1898. In 1900 he resigned his seat and paid a visit to Europe. After his return he was elected a member of the legislative assembly in April 1901, and on 27 May became premier and attorney-general. He was defeated in November but the succeeding ministry lasted only four weeks and Leake again became premier. In the following June he contracted pneumonia and died while still a comparatively young man on 24 June 1902. He married in 1881 the eldest daughter of Sir A. P. Burt (q.v.), who survived him with sons and daughters. The Times, 26 June 1902, announced that it had been the king's intention to confer the order of C.M.G. on the late Hon. George Leake.
Leake in his youth was a good cricketer and sportsman, and later became chairman of the committee of the Western Australian Turf Club. He was immensely popular as a politician and showed good debating powers. He ranked high among the men of his time, but his early death put an end to what would probably have been a very distinguished career.
P. Mennell, The Dictionary of Australasian Biography; Who's Who, 1902; H, Colebatch, A Story of a Hundred Years, p. 458; The West Australian, 25 and 27 June 1902; The Times, 26 June 1902.
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LEDGER, CHARLES (1818-1906),noted for his work in connexion with quinine, |
was born at London on 4 March 1818. After leaving school he went to South America and in 1836 was a clerk in a British merchant's office at Lima. He became an expert in alpaca wool, and in 1842 began business as a dealer in South American products. In 1847 he was grazing sheep and cattle half-way between Tacna and La Paz, and in 1852 went to Sydney to inquire into the possibility of introducing the alpaca into Australia. He returned to South America and by 1859 had brought several hundred alpacas to Sydney. This was a hazardous and difficult business as the export of alpacas was forbidden. Ledger was paid £15,000 for his alpacas and given a position in charge of them. The attempt to acclimatize them in Australia was a failure, but Ledger was not to blame for this. He returned to South America in 1863 and turned his attention to another problem. The cinchona tree, the bark of which yields quinine, grew in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, but no one was allowed to export either trees or seeds. The trees were being wastefully cut down without being replaced, and there was some danger that they might become extinct. Some seeds and plants had been introduced into Europe and Asia by Weddell in 1848, and Sir Clements R. Markham. went later to Peru, and Bolivia, and succeeded in acclimatizing trees in Asia and the Dutch East Indies. Ledger, however, found a better variety, now known as Cinchona Callsaya Ledgeriana, and in 1865 under great difficulties collected several pounds of seed. For his share in this work Ledger's servant, an Indian named Manuel, was arrested in Bolivia and so severely beaten that he died. The seed was sent to London where some of it was purchased by the Dutch government. Seeds were also sent to India and Queensland but the trees do not appear to have been grown in Australia. In 1883 Ledger went to Sydney again and in 1884 took a farm some 20 Miles from Goulburn. Losing his savings in the bank failures of the early 1890s, efforts were made by Sir Clements Markham and others to obtain some provision for Ledger from the Indian and Dutch governments. This was at first refused, but in 1897 on Ledger's seventy-ninth birthday, he received news that the Dutch government had granted him an annuity of £100 a year. He died nine years after in 1906.
Ledger did a great service to the world, as millions of cinchona trees grown in India and Java sprang originally from his seeds. By 1900 two-thirds of the world's supply of quinine came from Java, and over 40 years later the Ledger types of cinchona were still the best quinine yielders (Harper's Magazine, August 1943, p. 278).
A. C. Wootton, Chronicles of Pharmacy, vol. II; The Chemist and Druggist, 23 March, 6 April, 27 July 1895; Nature, 12 July 1941, p. 43; Chamber's Encyclopaedia under Cinchona; Norman Taylor, Cinchona in Java; The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 and 13 May 1859.
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LEEPER, ALEXANDER (1848-1934),educationist, |
son of the Rev. Alexander Leeper, canon of St Patrick's cathedral Dublin, was born on 3 June 1848. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated B.A. in 1871 an M.A. in 1875, and Oxford university where he took a first class in classics in 1874. He came to Victoria in 1875 as classical master for the Melbourne Church of England grammar school but in the following year was made principal of Trinity College at the university of Melbourne. The title of his office was afterwards changed to warden. He was not completely successful from the beginning, at one stage there was a revolt which ended in the expulsion of several students, but it became recognized that Leeper was devoted to the college, which he controlled with success for the remainder of his 42 years of office. He also took an important share in the management of the university as a member of the council from 1880 to 1887 and 1900 to 1923. He resigned his position as warden of Trinity in 1918, but continued to be a prominent figure in Melbourne for many years longer as a member of the council of education, as a lay canon of St Paul's cathedral, and as a trustee of the public library, museums and national gallery of Victoria of which he was president from 1920 to 1928. He was also a leading spirit in the Shakespeare Society and the Classical Association. He was a great fighter on the North of Ireland side in all controversies relating to Irish questions. He died at Melbourne on 6 August 1934. An excellent portrait by John Longstaff (q.v.) is in the national gallery at Melbourne.
Leeper was a man of strong personality and force of character, who did valuable work. He was a sound classical scholar, but beyond some lectures and pamphlets his only publication was his translation of Thirteen Satires of Juvenal, originally prepared in conjunction with H. A. Strong (q.v.) in 1882, but afterwards revised and issued under his own name. Trinity College, Dublin, gave him the degree of LL.D. The first Latin play and the first Greek tragedy to be performed in Australia were produced under his direction at Trinity College, Melbourne. Five of his students became bishops in the Anglican Church, J. Stretch and G. M. Long (q.v.) (Newcastle), R. Stephen (Hobart), T. H. Armstrong (Wangaratta) and W. C. Sadlier (Nelson, N.Z.). He was married twice (1) to Adeline Marian, daughter of Sir George Wigram Allen and (2) to Mary Elizabeth, daughter of F. G. Moule, who survived him with three sons and four daughters. Two of the sons had distinguished careers. The elder, Alexander Wigram Allen Leeper (1887-1935), born at Melbourne, educated at Melbourne grammar school, the university of Melbourne and at Oxford, eventually entered the British Foreign Office and rose to be first secretary at H.M. legation at Vienna 1924-8, and counsellor 1933. He broke down under the strain of his work in 1934 and died in January 1935. He had nearly completed A History of Medieval Austria which was published by the Oxford University Press in 1941. His next brother, Reginald Wildig Allen Leeper, born at Sydney in 1888, and educated at Melbourne grammar school and the universities of Melbourne and Oxford, also entered the foreign office and diplomatic service. He was first secretary at Warsaw, 1923-4; Riga, 1924; Constantinople, 1925; Warsaw, 1927-9; counsellor, 1933; C.M.G., 1936; assistant under-secretary, 1940; ambassador at the court of the King of the Hellenes, 1943; K.C.M.G. 1945; ambassador to Argentine Republic, 1946.
The Argus and The Age, Melbourne, 6 August 1934; Sir Ernest Scott, History of the University of Melbourne; E. La T. Armstrong and R. D. Boys, Book of the Public Library, 1906-31; Who's Who in Australia, 1933; Who's Who, 1934, 1947; personal knowledge.
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LEES, HARRINGTON CLARE (1870-1929),Anglican archbishop of Melbourne, |
eldest son of William Lees, J.P., Ashton-under-Lyne, England, and his wife, Emma, daughter of William Clare, M.D., was born on 17 March 1870. He was educated at the Leys School and St John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. with a second class in the theological tripos in 1892, and M.A. in 1896. He was ordained deacon in 1893, priest in 1894, and was a curate at Reading, chaplain at Turin and curate at Childwall, until in 1900 he became vicar of St John's, Kenilworth. Seven years later he became vicar of Christ Church, Beckenham, and in 1919 vicar of Swansea. In this year he was offered the bishopric of Bendigo but refused it. In August 1921 he was appointed archbishop of Melbourne, was consecrated at St Paul's cathedral, London, on 14 August 1921, and enthroned at St Paul's, Melbourne, on 15 February 1922.
Lees soon showed himself to be a vigorous worker and a good preacher. He was at Melbourne for less than seven years before he died, but his episcopate was marked by the undertaking of the completion of St Paul's cathedral, and by a great increase in the social work of the church; more especially in connexion with the various homes conducted by the mission of St James and St John, and the Church of England free kindergartens. He visited England in 1928 and died suddenly at Melbourne on 10 January 1929. He married (1) Winifred May, daughter of the Rev. J. M. Cranswick, and (2) Joanna Mary, daughter of Herbert Linnell. He had no children. His published works include: St Paul's Epistles to Thessalonica (1905), The Work of Witness and the Promise of Power (1908), The Joy of Bible Study (1909), The King's Highway (1910), St Paul and his Converts (1910), third impression (1916), Christ and his Slaves (1911), The Sunshine of the Good News (1912), The Divine Master in Home Life (1915) The Practice of the Love of Christ (1915), The Eyes of his Glory (1916), St Paul's Friends (1917), The Love that Ceases to Calculate (1918), God's Garden and Ours (1918), Failure and Recovery (1919), The Starting Place of Victory (1919). He was also a contributor to Hasting's A Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels. His portrait by Longstaff (q.v.) is in the chapter house at Melbourne.
Lees never spared himself and overwork was a contributing cause of his comparatively early death. He had bright personality and was much like by everyone, whether in an industrial parish like Swansea or as archbishop of Melbourne. At synod he was an excellent chairman, speaking little himself, but giving his rulings with decision. In the evangelistic tradition of the diocese, he belonged to no party and his ability, humanity and broad outlook, made him an excellent leader of his church.
The Argus, Melbourne, 11 and 14 January 1929; The Age, 11 January 1929; The Church of England Messenger, 25 January 1929; Crockford 1929; English Catalogue; Year-Books of the Diocese of Melbourne, 1922-9.
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LEE-STEERE, SIR JAMES GEORGE (1830-1903),speaker legislative assembly, Western Australia, |
was born at Ockley, Surrey, England, on 4 July 1830. His father was a leading resident and landed proprietor in the county. After being educated at Clapham grammar school, Lee-Steere became a midshipman in the merchant service and was at sea for 15 years. His last position was commander of the Devonshire, well-known East Indiaman. Early in 1860 he emigrated to Western Australia and leased 100,000 acres of land in the southern part of the colony. In 1867 he was one of the first elected members of the legislative council, won his seat again in 1870, and was then chosen leader of the elected members. In 1880 he lost his seat by one vote but almost immediately became a nominee member. He was made a member of the executive council in 1884 and two years later was elected speaker. In 1890 he was elected a member of the legislative assembly under responsible government and was unanimously elected speaker. He held this position for the remainder of his life. He represented Western Australia at the federal conventions of 1891 and 1897, and was a member of the constitutional committee on each occasion. He died at Perth on 1 December 1903. He married in 1859 Catherine Anne Leake who survived him with a large family of sons and daughters. He was knighted in 1888, and created K.C.M.G. in 1900.
Lee-Steere was an able, upright and hardworking member of the community. A good constitutional authority and an able speaker he was held in great respect by all parties in the house and by the public generally.
The West Australian, 1 and 2 December 1903; Who's Who, 1903; Quick and Garran, The Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth.
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LEFROY, SIR HENRY BRUCE (1854-1930),premier of Western Australia, |
was born at Perth on 24 March 1854. His father, Anthony O'Grady Lefroy, C.M.G., born in 1818, was secretary to Governor Fitzgerald from 1849 to 1853, and colonial treasurer of Western Australia from 1856 to 1890 when he retired. He sent his son to Rugby, where he excelled both in his classes and in athletics, becoming a member of the football fifteen. He declined a university career and returned to his father's station at Walebing, about 100 miles north of Perth, of which he soon became the manager. He was invited to join the Victoria Plains road board, was elected chairman when he was 21 and held the position for 20 years. He entered the legislative assembly in 1892 as member for Moore, in May 1897 became minister of education in Forrest's (q.v.) ministry, and about a year later exchanged this position for that of minister for mines. On Forrest's resigning in 1901 Lefroy became agent-general for Western Australia at London until 1904. Returning to Australia Lefroy devoted himself to his pastoral interests for six years. In 1911 he was elected to the legislative assembly for his old constituency, and was minister for lands and agriculture in the second Wilson (q.v.) ministry from July 1916 to June 1917. He then became premier still retaining his old portfolios. He resigned on 17 April 1919 and was a private member until 1924. His last years were spent in retirement at Walebing where he died on 19 March 1930. He was married twice (1) to Rose Wittenoom and (2) to Madeleine Walford, who survived him with three sons by the first marriage and two sons and a daughter by the second. Lefroy was created C.M.G. in 1903 and K.C.M.G. in 1919. He was a kindly, honourable man, belonging to the best type of squatter, always doing his duty as he understood it, and much loved and respected in his district and in parliament.
J. S. Battye, The Cyclopedia of Western Australia; The West Australian, 22 March 1930; Who's Who, 1930.
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LEGGE, WILLIAM VINCENT (1840-1918),ornithologist, |
son of Robert Vincent Legge, was born at Cullenswood. Tasmania, on 2 September 1840. He was taken to England when a child and educated at Bath, in France and Germany, and at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. In 1862 he obtained a commission in the royal artillery, and, after serving five years in England, was stationed with the British forces at Melbourne. In 1868 he was transferred to Ceylon where he formed a large collection of birds and re-organized the museum at Colombo. In 1877 he returned to England and prepared his A History of the Birds of Ceylon, issued in three parts between 1878 and 1880. This admirable work of over 1200 pages with 34 plates in colour and some woodcuts became the standard book on the subject and has not since been superseded. In 1883 Legge was offered and accepted the command of the Tasmanian military forces, and retired from the British army with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. His appointment terminated in June 1890, but in 1898 he was again offered this position and held it until 1902. During this period he re-organized the forces and obtained new artillery for the defence of the Derwent. He had contributed a "Systematic List of the Tasmanian Birds" to the Royal Society of Tasmania in 1886 and revised this for the 1900-1 volume of its Papers and Proceedings. He was president of the biology section of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science at the meeting held in New Zealand in 1904, and gave a valuable paper on "The Zoogeographical relations of the Ornis of the various subregions of the 'Australian region', with the Geographical distribution of the principal Genera therein". He died at Cullenswood, Tasmania on 25 March 1918. He was twice married (1) in 1877 to Mrs Alex. Thompson and (2) to Miss Douglas. Two sons of the first marriage survived him. He was a Fellow of the Linnean and Zoological Societies, a member of the British Ornithologists Union, and was first president of the Royal Australian Ornithological Union. His first contribution to the Ibis was a letter published in 1866, and various papers were printed during the eighteen seventies. A list of papers contributed to the Royal Society of Tasmania will be found at page 142 of its Papers and Proceedings for 1918. This list, however, omits his revised list of the birds of Tasmania which will be found on pages 90 to 101 of the Papers and Proceedings for 1900-1. A part of his collection of Ceylonese birds was presented by him to the natural history museum at South Kensington, and the remainder was given to the museum at Hobart.
The Ibis, October 1918, p. 721; The Emu, 1918, p. 77; The Mercury, Hobart, 27 March 1918; Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 1918, p. 142.
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LEICHHARDT, FRIEDRICH WILHELM LUDWIG (1813-1848),explorer, always known as Ludwig Leichhardt,[ also refer to Ludwig LEICHHARDT page at Project Gutenberg Australia]
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was born at Trebatsch, Prussia, on 23 October 1813. His father, Christian Hieronymus Matthias Leichhardt, was an inspector of peat-cutters, who also worked his own small farm. The boy showed ability at school and special efforts were made to send him to the university of Gottingen. He met there an Englishman, John Nicholson, who introduced him to his brother, William Nicholson. They became great friends and afterwards worked together at the university of Berlin, where, it has generally been stated, Leichhardt graduated as a doctor. This, however, has been questioned by A. H. Chisholm (Strange New World, pp. 73-4). Leichhardt went to London in 1837, stayed for some months with William Nicholson at Clifton, was then in London for a period, and in July 1838 went to Paris with Nicholson. During the next three years he lived at his friend's expense in France, Switzerland and Italy. In October 1840 he was due for military service in Germany, but did not attend and thus became a military deserter. Nicholson and he then decided to go to Australia where a brother of the Nicholsons was already established. William Nicholson, however, changed his mind, but paid Leichhardt's passage and gave him £200 with which to start in the new country. He sailed on 1 October 1841 and arrived at Sydney on 14 February 1842, carrying with him a letter of introduction to the surveyor-general, Sir T. L. Mitchell (q.v.).
When Leichhardt presented his credentials he suggested that he would like to do exploring work. As he was quite inexperienced Mitchell gave him no encouragement. Leichhardt then applied for the position of superintendent of the botanical gardens, again without success. He then had the good fortune to meet Lieutenant R. Lynd who was interested in science and invited Leichhardt to live with him. Leichhardt gave lectures on botany and geology but nothing more came of this. His talent for making friendships was again shown when A. W. Scott, a wealthy pastoralist, invited him to come to the Newcastle district and stay with him. Two months later Leichhardt went to Glendon station some 50 miles away where Helenus Scott, who was afterwards to become the father of Rose Scott (q.v.), was his host. During these visits Leichhardt did much botanizing but showed no talent as a bushman, he seemed in fact to have little sense of direction. Yet in January 1843 he made a remarkable journey by himself. He went from Glendon in northern New South Wales to Moreton Bay, Queensland, by a route 600 miles long with practically no equipment; he was afraid of nothing and succeeded in coming to the end of his journey without disaster. At Moreton Bay he found a German mission to the aborigines, and at once took the opportunity of becoming familiar with the natives of the country he hoped to explore. He collected specimens which were sent to his friend, Lieutenant Lynd, at Sydney, and made many excursions into the country, one of them taking him as far as Wide Bay 100 miles to the north. He was thinking of returning to Sydney when he met Thomas Archer (q.v.), a young pioneer who had a run in the Moreton Bay district. He stayed with Archer and his brothers for some weeks and learned they were not satisfied with their country. Leichhardt agreed to look out for land that was more suitable. There was talk of a government expedition to Port Essington on the north coast of Australia, but it was vetoed on a question of cost and Leichhardt became fired with the thought that it might be possible to arrange a private expedition. He went back to Newcastle and then to Sydney where he was warmly welcomed by Lieutenant Lynd. With some assistance from friends he organized an expedition which left Sydney on 13 August 1844. At Brisbane some additions were made to the party which then consisted of Leichhardt, James Calvert, who came to Australia with him in the same ship, and six other men of whom two were aborigines. P. Hodgson, a young squatter, and John Gilbert (q.v.), one of Gould's (q.v.), collectors, joined the party later. Jimbour station on the Darling Downs was left on 1 October, and about a month later Hodgson and another man were sent back as it was feared that the provisions might prove insufficient for the whole party. For a long period a course was set generally in a north-westerly or northerly direction, and towards the end of June 1845 when approaching the Gulf of Carpentaria a turn was made more to the south-west. On 28 June the party was attacked by aborigines at night, Gilbert was killed outright and two others were wounded. In every way this was a great misfortune, for Gilbert, the ablest naturalist and best bushman of the party, also had the best understanding of the aborigines. After burying Gilbert, though the two wounded men were in much pain, the party started again two days later and on 5 July reached salt water. Leichhardt was then able to record that he had discovered a road from the eastern coast of Australia to the Gulf of Carpentaria, with water all the way in country available for pastoral purposes. After a long and weary march round the Gulf of Carpentaria, Port Essington was reached on 17 December 1845. After resting for about a month, the members of the expedition returned to Sydney on the Heroine by way of Torres Strait. They arrived on 25 March 1846 and were given an enthusiastic welcome. The account given by Sturt (q.v.) of his recent journey to the interior had caused much disappointment, and Leichhardt's story of the good land he had found led to great rejoicing. A public subscription raised £1520, to which the government added £1000. of this Leichhardt's own share amounted to £1454, and he then prepared for the press his Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia from Moreton Bay to Port Essington. This was published at London in 1847.
Leichhardt now decided to try to cross the continent from Brisbane to Perth and started from Jimbour station on 7 December 1846. This expedition was mismanaged from the beginning and was insufficiently equipped with food and medicine. The course followed that of the previous expedition for some distance and soon everything began to go wrong. Heavy rain set in and nearly every member of the party suffered from malarial fever. On 22 June 1847, at about the point from which the explorer had decided to strike to the west, the hopelessness of the position became apparent and the expedition turned back. Chauvel's station was reached on 23 July, and soon after the party broke up. Leichhardt returned to Sydney a few months later and towards the end of 1847 learned that he had been awarded gold medals by the Geographical Societies of London and Paris, and that he had been pardoned by the German government for his evasion of military service. He started on his last journey in February 1848. The intention was to find a way across the continent to Perth, and the party consisted of seven men including two aborigines. It appears to have been ill equipped and with insufficient food, as Leichhardt believed they would be able to live on the country to a great extent. In April they passed through Macpherson's station and after that were never heard of again. H. Hely and A. C. Gregory (q.v.) headed expeditions sent especially to search for the lost explorer, but no trace of him has ever been found except possibly a marked tree near the Barcoo River.
Leichhardt was tall, slight and thin featured. He must have had great personal charm for wherever he went he made friends who believed in him, and cared for him. But he cannot rank as a really great explorer, because he was not an inspiring leader and lacked foresight and caution. Two men, Daniel Bunce and John F. Mann, who were with him on his 1846-7 expedition afterwards wrote unfavourably of him.
Mrs Cotton whose biography of Leichhardt is generally written in a strain of eulogy states that both