settlement. By 1792 there were also some medical men in private practice.71 At first,
it was difficult to recruit and retain surgeons in the colony, as many had successful
practices at home. In 1814 Governor Macquarie told Lord Bathurst that ‘a few
respectable Medical Men should be encouraged to come out to this Colony, as Free
Settlers'.
There was greater incentive for medical men to come to New South
Wales when many military and naval surgeons were reduced to half pay in the
middle of the decade, but it took them some time to assess their prospects and decide
on emigration. On the instigation of William Redfem, an emancipist medical
practitioner and ex-naval surgeon, the government adopted the practice of insisting
68 Murray to Darling 13 Aug 1829; Murray to Darling 8 May 1830; Murray to Darling 13 Jul. 1830,
HRA vol. 15, 103-104, 468-469, 580.
69 Felton Mathew, Diary of Voyage to NSW on Convict Ship Morely 3 Aug. - 3 Dec. 1829, NLA MS 15; entry for Sarah Louise Mathew, DNZB, 282-283.
70 DNZB, vol. 1, 282; Olive Havard, ‘Mrs Mathew Felton’s Journal, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 29, part 2 (1943), 88-89.
71 Note 43, HRA 1, vol. 8, 662-663.
that naval surgeons accompanied each shipload of convicts.73 This gave half pay naval surgeons a year’s employment and it also gave them an opportunity to judge the colony and its prospects.
By 1817, no additional medical practitioners had come as free settlers and the government medical establishment had been reduced from six to five.74 Macquarie suggested that it would be necessary to provide higher pay and other benefits to attract doctors, particularly to country districts.75 The medical establishment began to increase after this. Dr James Bowman and Dr Edward Bromley, both of whom had been naval surgeon superintendents on convict ships, came out in 1817 with recommendations from the Colonial Office that they be appointed to medical posts at Hobart and Port Dalrymple (Launceston). Governor Macquarie exercised his local discretion and refused to discharge the incapacitated incumbents, until the Colonial Office granted them pensions in recognition of their long service.76 Disappointed, both Bromley and Bowman returned to England to make representations to the Secretary of State. Bromley came back to Van Diem en’s Land as a Naval Officer and James Bowman was appointed Principal Surgeon in New South Wales on the retirement of D ’Arcy Wentworth.77 Bowman, who took up his post in Sydney in 1819 was bom in Carlisle, Cumberland, had enlisted in the Navy as an assistant surgeon in 1806 and been appointed surgeon the following year.78 By 1821, the medical establishment in New South Wales had increased to eight, with six of these
73 Redfern to Macquarie 30 Sep. 1814, HRA 1, vol. 8, 290-292; Macquarie to Bathurst 18 Mar. 1816; Macquarie to Bathurst 4 Apr. 1817, HRA 1, vol. 9, 54-57, 344-344.
74 A List of Persons Holding Civil and Military Employments... 1 January 1816, HRA 1, vol. 9, 94; List of Names etc., of Persons Holding Civil and Military Appointments... 31 March 1817, ibid.., 244. 75 Ibid., 355.
76 Macquarie to Bathurst 18 March 1816, HRA 1, vol. 9, 68-75; Bathurst to Macquarie 20 Jan 1817, ibid., 204; Macquarie to Bathurst 12 Dec 1817, ibid., 716-717.
77 Goulburn to Macquarie 20 May 1819, HRA 1, vol. 10, 150-151; Bathurst to Macquarie 14 Apr. 1819, ibid. 146146-147.
surgeons being new appointments.79 By 1828 the numbers of government practitioners had increased to nine, but again only two of the men employed in 1821 remained on the staff, Doctors Bowman and Hill. In the 1820s, the medical men in government employment were former military or naval surgeons and came from all of the countries of the United Kingdom. English surgeons were competing for posts in the colony with men from Ireland, Scotland and Wales; those from Ireland and Scotland might well have medical degrees.
William Elyard had trained as a medical apprentice in Gravesend, Kent and in London hospitals, prior to a career as a naval surgeon.80 He had no appointment to the colonial medical establishment, but he had been granted a free passage for his family on the convict transport, John Bull, on which he acted as surgeon superintendent. In retrospect in a letter to Governor Brisbane, Elyard stated his reason for emigrating. ‘Your Excellency is aware many Officers of the Army and Navy have been induced by the continuation of the Peace and the want of employment in their professions to seek in other Countries a better provision for their families than their limited incomes enabled them to make in England’81. His son, Samuel Elyard noted, ‘having determined to settle in New South W ales...Being on half pay and having a wife and five children, he hoped to provide for them in this country better than in England, where every profession was overloaded; and intended to exercise his profession and also become a settler’. For a number of years after arrival, his finances were insufficient to maintain his family comfortably, but despite this when he was offered a post of assistant surgeon in the government service he turned down the offer, refusing as a well-qualified surgeon to undergo a fresh examination of his knowledge and experience, a hide-bound act of pride which
79 List of Names etc. of persons Holding Civil and Military Appointments...30 Nov. 1821, HRA 1, vol. 10, 579; Return of the Civil Servants of the Government.. .23 Nov. 1828, HRA 1, vol. 14, 479. 80 Elyard family, Papers 1807-1892, ML MSS 594/1,4-6.
disadvantaged he and his family for a number of years, until they were able to able to live on rental income from his country land grants.
Merchants
Merchants were another significant group in the developing colonial economy and society. These men operated import-export businesses connected to London-based firms, and a smaller number of Liverpool and Edinburgh enterprises. They were from mixed backgrounds, but they liaised with and worked for the powerful upper middle class British gentlemen financiers, who made money from advancing credit, exporting wholesale goods and importing produce into Britain from around the world. Mercantile firms and their colonial agents played an important role in the development of free enterprise in New South Wales. Wealthy merchants were of a class and status far removed from D arling’s despised shopkeepers, though undercapitalised merchants did merge into the shopkeeper class.
Merchants had seen opportunities for themselves from the early days of the colony, and when the East India Company’s monopoly was lifted from the Australian region, they began coming in greater numbers.83 Some ship’s captains acted on their own account, or as agents for others, and until 1817 many of the
82
PJ. Cain & A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion 1688-1914 (London: Longman, 1993), 3-104.
83 Margaret J.E. Steven, The Changing Pattern of Commerce in New South Wales, 1810-1821',
Business Archives and History 3, no. 2 (August 1963): 139-155; Margaret Steven, Merchant Campbell 1769-1846: A Study o f Colonial Trade (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1965); D.R. Hainsworth, The Sydney Traders: Simeon Lord and His Contemporaries 1788-1821, 2nd ed. (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1981, originally pub. 1972); Gwyneth M. Dow, Samuel Terry: The Botany Bay Rothschild (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1974); Lyndon Rose, Richard Siddins of Port Jackson (Canberra: Roebuck, 1984); Frank Broeze, Mr Brooks and the Australian Trade: Imperial Business in the Nineteenth Century (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1993); N.G. Butlin, Forming a Colonial Economy: Australia 1810-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Simon Ville, 'Business Development in Colonial Australia', Australian Economic History Review 38, no. 1 (March 1998): 16-41