'Pitchforking Irish Coercionists into Colonial Vacancies'
The Case of Sir Henry Blake and the Queensland Governorship
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2013.16Keywords:
Sir Henry Blake, Queensland Governorship, Irish Coercionists, Tribes of GalwayAbstract
During the year 1888 — the centenary of white settlement — Australia celebrated the jubilee of Queen Victoria together with the advent of electricity to light Tamworth, the first town in the Southern Hemisphere to receive that boon. In the north-eastern colony of Queensland, serious debates involving local administrators included membership of the Federal Council, the annexation of British New
Guinea and the merits of a separation movement in the north. In this distant colony, events in Ireland — such as Belfast attaining city status or Oscar Wilde publishing The happy prince and other tales — had little immediate global impact. Nevertheless, minds were focused on Irish matters in October, when the scion of a well-established west Ireland family — a select member of the traditional Tribes of Galway, no less — was named as the new governor of Queensland. The administrators of the developing colony roundly challenged the imperial nominators, invoking a storm that incited strong opinions from responsible governments throughout Australia and around the world.
References
The Federal Council of Australasia had its first meeting in 1885 and consisted of the then British colonies of Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, but New South Wales — the largest colony in the area — was never part of the council. While premier of Queensland, Sir Thomas McIlwraith urged representation on the council by both government and opposition nominees. Many members, including Alfred Deakin in Victoria, were firmly of the view that federation of the Australian colonies was an essential step before consideration of an imperial federation.
For the Blakes as one of the Tribes of Galway, see Tim Robinson, Connemara: the last pool of darkness, (Dublin: Penguin, 2008), pp. 22, 46–70, 299–305; Patrick Melvin, ‘The Galway Tribes as landowners and gentry’, in Gerard Moran (ed.), Galway: history and society (Dublin: Geography Publications, 1996), pp. 319–74, esp. pp. 324–30.
Evening Post (NZ), 6 September 1888, 2; C. A. Bernays, Queensland politics during sixty (1859–1919) years, Brisbane: Government Printer, 1919, pp. 116–19.
Benjamin Kitt had been harshly convicted to three years’ imprisonment for stealing two pairs of boots valued at 40 shillings. The London administration immediately ordered the man’s release while considering a final decision. Queensland Legislative Assembly [Qld Leg. Ass.] Hansard, 55 (1888); Votes and Proceedings [V&P] 1 (1889), pp. 679, 691; 1889, vol. 1, p. 601. McIlwraith had formed his second ministry on 13 June 1888.
Musgrave’s demise was attributed to worry caused by this matter. In the official reply received on 30 November 1888, after citing an earlier New South Wales precedent, Lord Knutsford confirmed that Musgrave had acted ‘strictly within the directions he had been given’ but should have ‘subordinated his personal opinion to the advice of his ministers’.
C. A. Bernays, Queensland — our seventh political decade, 1920–1930 (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1931), p. 359.
Sir Arthur Berriedale Keith, Responsible government in the Dominions, 3rd ed., Part 3 (London: Stephens & Son, 1909), p. 80.
Groom was one of the ‘exile’ convicts sent to Moreton Bay in 1849. He won a seat in the Legislative Council of the Queensland parliament in 1862, which he retained until his death in 1901, establishing a record for length of service. See Duncan Waterson, ‘William Henry Groom’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 4 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1972), pp. 304–5; also Duncan Waterson, ‘The remarkable career of Wm. H. Groom’, Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 49.1 (June 1963) pp. 38–57; M. B. Cameron, ‘W. H. Groom, Agrarian Liberal’, BA Hons thesis, University of Queensland, 1965. Disputes about colonial input regarding nominations to the Queensland governorship were not new — see Brisbane Courier, 12 October 1868, written when the initial governor, Sir George Ferguson Bowen, was transferred to New Zealand.
Bernays, Our seventh political decade, p. 358.
House of Commons, Hansard, 330, 16 November 1888, cc. 1386–7.
Queenslander, 24 November 1888, 940–1 quoted these sources. Immigration figures taken from Reports of the Agent General in Queensland Parliament, Legislative Assembly, Votes & Proceedings, 1881–87 inclusive.
The Imperial Federation League,founded in London in 1884, urged the establishment of an imperial parliament consisting of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Barbados and British Guiana to promote imperial unification, especially for trade and defence matters in the face of disintegration stimulated by the granting of self-government. In Australia from 1885, branches were formed with principles later revised in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, leading to Imperial Conferences and eventually to the Commonwealth of Nations. See Raymond Evans, Clive Moore, Kay Saunders and Bryan Jamison, 1901: our future’s past (Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 1997), p. 250.
Daily Chronicle, 9 November 1888; Pall Mall Gazette, 9 November 1888; Standard, 10 November 1888; Times, 12 November 1888.
Burke’s Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage (Delaware: Burke’s Peerage, 2003), p. 120; Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, Burke’s Irish Family Records (London: Burkes Peerage, 1976), p. 12; Dictionary of Irish Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 583–4; and several Queensland newspaper biographies.
Queenslander, 24 November 1888, 940.
Brisbane Courier, 15 February 1889, 7. I thank Dr Katie McConnel for alerting me to references from the Drury Scrapbooks, held at John Oxley Library, OM92-93/3.
Brisbane Courier, 20 October 1888. The Baden-Powell name also may have been included because the youngest of the brothers, Captain Baden Fletcher Smyth Baden-Powell, was aide de camp to Sir Anthony Musgrave and remained in that capacity when the next governor was appointed.
Quoted in Queenslander, 24 November 1888, 940. Charles Dalton Clifford Lloyd (1844–91) was the author of Ireland under the Land League, a narrative of personal experiences, which was published in 1892 after his death.
Pope Hennessy, a Roman Catholic, was unpopular in many quarters. He had served as Governor of Hong Kong, succeeding Sir Arthur Kennedy when he was appointed as Queensland governor in 1877, and was followed in that position by Sir George Bowen, who had been the first governor of Queensland (1859–68).
See Clem Lack, ‘Colonial representation in the nineteenth century: pro-consuls of empire and some Australian agents-general’, Pt. 1, Royal Historical Society of Queensland Journal, 7(3) (1965), 462–7. Lack pointed out that no supporting papers were located at the Queensland State Archives, and— surprisingly— the matter was not identified by Bernays in his forensic study; rather, he suggested that some notes may be in the private papers of Lord Kimberley, the probable negotiator. All evidence of this appointment discovered by Clem Lack was placed in the Royal Historical Society of Queensland library in 1965. James Pope Hennessy, Verandah: some episodes in the Crown Colonies, 1867–1889 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1964). Although seemingly a constant embarrassment, Pope Hennessy, rather than being encouraged to retire, surprisingly continued to be appointed to Crown Colonies by successive secretaries for the colonies.
Lack, ‘Colonial representation’, 469.
Queenslander, 1 December 1888, 1009.
The Times, 28 November 1888.
T. A. Heathcote, The British field marshals 1736–1997 (London: Leo Cooper, 1999), p. 232.
Winslow Homer (1836–1910), predominantly a landscape artist and society painter, opened a studio in New York City in 1859.
This episode of the Fact or fortune series was shown on Australian television in November 2011, created as Episode 2, broadcast in Britain on 26 June 2011: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0125gg3. See also the novel by family member Patrick Cockburn, The broken boy (London: Jonathan Cape, 2011).
Theodore, obviously wanting to research precedents challenging London officials appointing a governor, had his staff member, J. D. O’Hagan, call up all the papers from the former Departments of Premier and Governor relating to the appointment of Sir Henry Blake, top numbered 1890/10628. In Queensland State Archives [QSA], Register 1890 COL/B, this entry bears the annotation: Permission to inspect correspondence respecting Governor; loaned to Mr O’Hagan for Theodore, 28 August 1918. Despite a thorough search, these original exchanges with London officials referring to the Blake appointment, although summarised in register entries, could not be located in 2012. I thank Archives officer Fiona Gaske at QSA for her efforts to locate this lost correspondence.
After a military career from 1880 to 1899, Sir Matthew Nathan (1862–1939) served as acting governor in Sierra Leone and then as governor of the Gold Coast. He then succeeded Sir Henry Blake as governor of Hong Kong in 1904 before transferring to Natal in 1907 (coinciding with Goold-Adams’ term in the neighbouring Orange River Colony). In 1910 he was recalled to England, where he was appointed in four Home Departments over the next ten years, including a posting as Under Secretary for Ireland commencing just prior to World War I. Nathan was in Dublin at the time of the 1916 Easter Rebellion and at the Harding Commission he was criticised for not recognising and acting against obvious unrest in the months leading up to the event. See Anthony P. Haydon, Sir Matthew Nathan: British colonial governor and civil servant(Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1976), Chapter 6; Bernays, Our seventh political decade, pp. 373–6.
Bernays, Our seventh political decade, pp. 5–6; Clem Lack, Three decades of Queensland political history 1929–1960 (Brisbane: Government Printer, 1960), pp. 11–12; R. D. Lumb, The Constitutions of the Australian States (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1991), p. 49.
Haydon, Nathan, p. 227.
The first Australian-born governor-general was Sir Isaac Isaacs in 1931. Victoria appointed its first Australian-born governor in 1934. Mrs Leneen Forde, AC, Governor of Queensland from 1992 to 1997, was born in Canada.
Brisbane Courier, 19 January 1889, 6 outlined the article.
