Edward John Eyre
Edward John Eyre | |
---|---|
Lieutenant-Governor of New Munster, New Zealand | |
In office 1848–1853 | |
Governor | George Grey |
Preceded by | None, position established |
Succeeded by | None, position abolished |
Personal details | |
Born | Whipsnade, England | 5 August 1815
Died | 30 November 1901 Devon, England | (aged 86)
Occupation | Explorer of Australia, Colonial Administrator, Grazier |
Edward John Eyre (5 August 1815 – 30 November 1901) was an English land explorer of the Australian continent, colonial administrator, and Governor of Jamaica.
Early life
Eyre was born in Whipsnade, Bedfordshire, shortly before his family moved to Hornsea, Yorkshire, where he was christened.[1] His parents were Rev. Anthony William Eyre and Sarah (née Mapleton).[2] After completing grammar school at Louth and Sedbergh, he moved to the colonial settlement of Sydney, Australia, rather than join the army or go to university. He gained experience in the new land by boarding with and forming friendships with prominent gentlemen and became a flock owner when he bought 400 lambs a month before his 18th birthday.[3]
In South Australia
In December 1837, Eyre started
With the money from the sale, Eyre set out to explore the interior of South Australia. In 1839, Eyre went on
In 1840, Eyre went on a third expedition, reaching a lake that was later named Lake Eyre, in his honour.[6]
Overland to Albany
Eyre, together with his aboriginal companion Wylie, was the first European to traverse the coastline of the Great Australian Bight and the Nullarbor Plain by land in 1840–1841, on an almost 3,200-kilometre (2,000 mi) trip to Albany, Western Australia. He had originally led the expedition with John Baxter and three aboriginal people.
On 29 April 1841, two of the aboriginal people killed Baxter and left with most of the supplies. Eyre and Wylie survived only because they chanced to encounter at a bay near Esperance, Western Australia, the French whaling ship Mississippi, under the command of an Englishman, Captain Thomas Rossiter, for whom Eyre named the location Rossiter Bay. In 1845, he returned to England on board the Symmetry, leaving Port Adelaide on 16 December 1844,[7] and sailing via Cape Town, under Captain Elder.[7] Upon reaching England, the Symmetry called first at Deal, Kent on 11 May 1845, before anchoring at London on 12 May.[8] He brought with him two aboriginal boys, one of whom was Warrulan.[7][9]
Once in England, he published a narrative of his travels.[10]
Colonial Governor in New Zealand
From 1848 to 1853, he served as Lieutenant-Governor of
Colonial Governor in Jamaica
From 1854 Eyre was Governor of several Caribbean island colonies, including Saint Vincent and Antigua.[12]
As Governor of Jamaica, Eyre mixed only with the white ruling class, to whose interests he was sympathetic. Instead of trying to relieve the unemployment problems or the unfair tax burdens on the poorer classes, he busied himself with the passing of bills to provide punishment on the treadmill for certain offences, and flogging as the penalty for stealing food. George William Gordon, a mixed-race member of the Assembly of Jamaica, criticised Eyre's draconian measures, warning that "If we are to be governed by such a Governor much longer, the people will have to fly to arms and become self-governing."[13]
Baptist preacher and rebel leader Paul Bogle encouraged and led a rebellion, and occasioned the death of 18 militia or officials. Fearful of an island-wide uprising, Eyre brutally suppressed the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865. Up to 439 black peasants were killed in the reprisals, some 600 flogged, and about 1000 houses burnt down. General Luke Smythe O'Connor was directly responsible for those who inflicted excessive punishment.[14]
Erroneously convinced that he was one of the leaders of the rebellion, Eyre authorised the execution of Gordon, who was tried for high treason by Lieutenant Herbert Brand in a court-martial. On 23 October, Gordon was hanged two days after his hastily-arranged trial, and Bogle followed him on to the gallows two days later, when he was hanged along with 14 others.[15]
The controlling European element of the Jamaican population, those who had the most to lose, regarded Eyre as the hero who had saved Jamaica from disaster.
Those events created great controversy in England and resulted in demands for Eyre to be arrested and tried for murdering Gordon.
.The Governor Eyre Defence and Aid Committee was set up by
Cases against Lieutenant Brand and Brigadier
The case went next to the civil courts. Alexander Phillips charged Eyre with six counts of assault and false imprisonment, in addition to conversion of Phillips's "goods and chattels",
Later life
Eyre's legal expenses were covered by the British government in 1872, and in 1874 he was granted the pension of a retired colonial governor. He lived out the remainder of his life at Walreddon Manor in the parish of
Recognition and legacy
A statue of Eyre is in Victoria Square in Adelaide as well as Rumbalara Reserve in Springfield NSW on the Mouat Walk. In 1970, an Australia Post (then Postmaster-General's Department) postage stamp bore his portrait.[18]
South Australia's
Eyre Road, Linton, Palmerston North also is thought to be named after him as well as a few streets in Canterbury, New Zealand. Closer to the
Eyre's 1840 expedition was dramatised in the 1962 Australian radio play Edward John Eyre by Colin Thiele.
In 1971, the Australian composer Barry Conyngham wrote the opera Edward John Eyre (opera)|Edward John Eyre, using poems by Meredith Oakes and extracts from Eyre's Journals of Expeditions of Discovery.[19]
Works
- "Wikidata Q108704393.
See also
References
- ^ Steve Pocock (2000). "History". Great Australian Bight Safaris. Archived from the original on 18 February 2006. Retrieved 8 April 2006.
- ^ a b Geoffrey Dutton (1966), "Eyre, Edward John (1815–1901)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 1 (Australian National University), accessed 25 October 2018.
- ^ Kevin Koepplinger. "Hero and Tyrant:Edward John Eyre's Legacy". University of Michigan. Archived from the original on 15 December 2012.
- ^ Foster R., Nettelbeck A. (2011), Out of the Silence, p. 32-33 (Wakefield Press).
- Manning, Geoffrey H. (2012). "Names - E" (PDF). A Compendium of the Place Names of South Australia. State Library of South Australia. Retrieved 25 October 2018.
- ^ a b Painter, Alison. "1 May 1839 Edward John Eyre". Professional Historians Association—South Australia. Archived from the original on 12 October 2020. Retrieved 9 October 2020.
- ^ )
- Wikidata Q105946608.
- Wikidata Q105946256.
- ^ public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Eyre, Edward John". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 101–102. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ Michael Wordsworth Standish (1966). "Eyre, Edward John". The 1966 Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Te Ara. Retrieved 16 November 2014.
- ^ Chisholm 1911.
- ^ C.V. Black, A History of Jamaica (London: Collins, 1975), p. 191.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Peter Handford (2008). "Edward John Eyre and the Conflict of Laws". Melbourne University Law Review. 32 (3): 822–860.
- ^ Gad Heuman, The Killing Time: The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994).
- ISBN 0-7100-7914-1
- ISBN 0-333-33841-3
- ^ Australian postage stamp honouring Edward John Eyre. australianstamp.com
- ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0.
Further reading
- "Eyre, Edward John (1815–1901)", Angus and Robertson, 1949).
- "Papers Relative to the Affairs of South Australia—Aborigines", Accounts and Papers 1843, Volume 3 (London: William Clowes and Sons), pp. 267–310.
- Geoffrey Dutton (1967), The Hero as Murderer: the life of Edward John Eyre, Australian explorer and Governor of Jamaica 1815–1901. Sydney: Collins ; Melbourne: Cheshire, (paperback reprint: Penguin, 1977).
- Julie Evans (2002), "Re-reading Edward Eyre—Race, resistance and repression in Australia and The Caribbean", Australian Historical Studies, 33: 175–198; .
- Catherine Hall (2002), Civilising Subjects: Colony and Metropoloe in the English Imagination, 1830–1867. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Ivan Rudolph (2013), Eyre, the forgotten explorer. Sydney: HarperCollins.
- Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia, and overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound, in the years 1840-41, sent by the Colonists of Australia, with the sanction and support of the Government; including an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Aborigines, and the state of their relations with Europeans. By E. J. Eyre, Resident Magistrate, Murray River. 2 volumes. London (1845). Available at the Internet Archive: Volume I, Volume II.