Edward Wilson (journalist) – Wikipedia

By /

English-Australian journalist and philanthropist

Edward Wilson (13 November 1813 – 10 January 1878)[1] was an English-Australian journalist and philanthropist.

The second of the three children of John Wilson (1774–1834), a linen draper, and Mary Wilson (née Jones; 1766–1838), Edward Wilson was born at Hampstead, London on 13 November 1813. He never married.

He was educated at a “large private school” in Hamstead – where, among his schoolmates, were William Clark Haines (1810–1866), the first Premier of Victoria, the brothers James Spowers (1813–1879) and Allan Spowers (1815–1876), proprietors of The Argus, and Douglas Thomas Kilburn (1813–1871), the artist, ethnographer, and daguerreotypist.[2]

Having left school, with his parents wanting him to “engage in commerce”, he entered a business house at Manchester, and subsequently went to London, involved in the “Manchester trade”.[2]

In 1842 he migrated to Australia.

He bought The Argus around 1847.[1]

Costs of running the Argus had increased and Wilson was close to ruin, but was saved when Lauchlan Mackinnon bought a partnership from James Gill, and took over management.[citation needed]

Rambles at the Antipodes

[edit]

In 1857 and 1858, he travelled throughout colonial Australia and New Zealand, and on to England – where he consulted experts in relation to his failing eyesight (due to cataracts) – via the “Overland Route”; and, whilst doing so wrote an extended series of 21 articles for The Argus’ newspaper.[3] The articles, which were published on a regular basis (often three articles in a single week), were later collected together and published in their aggregate (with an additional statistical appendix, and 12 lithographs by Samuel Thomas Gill) in 1859, as Rambles at the Antipodes (1859).[4]

Wilson’s grave at Melbourne General Cemetery

He died at Hayes, in Kent, on 10 January 1878.[2] His remains were repatriated to Australia on the SS Aconcagua, and he was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery, on 7 July 1878, in a grave that “is immediately opposite the burial place of Sir Charles Hotham”.[5]

The bulk of his estate was used to form the Edward Wilson Trust which since his death has distributed several million dollars to Victorian charities, in particular the Melbourne, Alfred and Children’s hospitals in Victoria.

  1. ^ a b
    Serle, Geoffrey. “Wilson, Edward (1813–1878)”. Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-522-84459-7. ISSN 1833-7538. OCLC 70677943. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  2. ^ a b c Anon (1878).
  3. ^ The first was published in August 1857 (Wilson, 1857a), and the last in October 1858 (Wilson, 1858k).
  4. ^ With (Wilson, 1857a,b,c) forming the first chapter, (Wilson, 1857d,e,f,g,h,i) the second chapter, (Wilson, 1858a,b.c,d,e) the third chapter, and (Wilson, 1858f,g,h,i,j.k) the fourth and last chapter.
  5. ^ (General News Items), The Argus, (Monday, 8 July 1878), p.5.
  6. ^ “No.IV” was not published within the pages of the regular Argus, with those published jumping from “No.III” (14 June) to “No.V” (18 June). Given the accurate “verbatim/reprint” nature of the contents of Rambles at the Antipodes, the inescapable conclusion is that the missing article was published at page one of a (currently un-digitized by TROVE) Supplement to The Argus on 15, 16, or 17 June [1] — as were each of 1858f, 1858g, 1858h, 1858j, and 1858k in the October of that same year — and that the text of the missing article was identical to that which was later published in the aggregate volume (i.e., Wilson, 1859, pp.92-102).


Must Read

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top