Alfred Howitt

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Alfred William Howitt (born April 17, 1830 , Nottingham , England , † March 7, 1908 , Bairnsdale , Victoria in Australia ) was a geologist , anthropologist and naturalist. He is known in Australian history for finding the last surviving member of the Burke and Wills expedition , John King .

Early life

Howitt was a son of the writer couple William Howitt and Mary Botham . During his parents' stay in Germany for several years, he attended the school in Heidelberg and then the University College School in London . With his father and brother Charlton, he followed the gold rush to Australia in 1852 . In 1854 father and brother went back to England while he was a gold prospecting geologist in the north of Gippsland . Charlton came to New Zealand in 1860 , but had an accident in Lake Brunner in June 1863 during a road construction project.

Alfred married Maria, née Boothby, in 1863, with whom he had five children. Maria was the daughter of Judge Benjamin Boothby, Minister of Justice for the British colony of Victoria. Howitt received a post from 1863 as a judicial officer with the police in the gold fields of Victoria. In 1889 he became secretary of a state mining division and from 1905 to 1906 he was chairman of the Royal Commission of Coal Mining of Victoria.

Expeditions

Mount Howitt (1742 m) in the Alpine National Park

In 1859 Howitt led an expedition to Lake Eyre , of which Peter Warburton, who had previously returned from an expedition, had reported positively about arable landscapes, and he led an expedition from Adelaide through the Flinders Ranges to the Davenport Range for the same purpose . In both cases he warned his clients about wrong decisions.

In 1861 Howitt was hired to conduct the search for the lost expedition by Burke and Wills . Howitt was only with the most necessary equipment and a small crew. He found the last survivor of the expedition, John King , on Cooper Creek . Howitt buried Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills before returning to Melbourne with King. On the following expedition to Cooper Creek in 1862, he first brought the bodies of Burke and Wills to Adelaide and then by ship to Melbourne for the state funeral on January 21, 1863.

Howitt collected plants during his expeditions to northeast South Australia , southwest Queensland and west New South Wales . He gave his collections, which are now in Melbourne, to Ferdinand von Mueller .

Howitt examined the culture and social conditions of the Aborigines , in particular the relationships and the terms of marriage. He was influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and by modern anthropology. Howitt wrote his main work Kamilaroi and Kurnai with Lorimer Fison in 1879, which is still considered an important work in modern anthropology internationally to this day. Norman Tindale , for example, refers to this work .

Honors

Howitt Hall at Monash University in Victoria, Australia

In 1903 Howitt was honored with the Clarke Medal by the Royal Society of New South Wales , and in 1904 he was the first to receive the Mueller Medal . The Mount Howitt in Victoria and the Howitt Hall of Monash University are named after him.

Works

  • Howitt, Alfred William, 1870, March 15, 1870. Experiences in Central Australia . Gippsland Times .
  • Howitt, Alfred William, 1878. Notes on the Aborigines of Coopers Creek . In RB Smyth (Ed.), The Aborigines of Victoria .
  • Howitt, Alfred William, 1889. Note as to descent in the Dieri tribe . Journal of the Anthropological Institute . Vol. 19, p. 90.
  • Howitt, Alfred William, 1890. The Dieri and other kindred tribes of Central Australia . Journal of the Anthropological Institute . Vol. 20, pp. 30-104.
  • Howitt, Alfred William, 1898. Reminiscences of Central Australia . Alma mater . Vol. 3 (No. 1).
  • Howitt, Alfred William, 1904. The native tribes of south-east Australia . London: Macmillan.
  • Howitt, Alfred William, 1907. Personal reminiscences of Central Australia and the Burke and Wills Expedition: Presidents inaugural address . Journal of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science . Adelaide 1907
  • Howitt, Alfred William, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, & Siebert Otto, 1904. Legends of the Dieri and kindred tribes of Central Australia . London: Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
  • Geological Survey of Victoria . Report of Progress by R. -Brough Smyth with Reports on the Geology, Mineralogy, and Physical Structure of varions Parts of the Colony by Ferd. M. Krause Reginald AF Murray Alfred W. Howitt. (etc.) Ferres Melbourne, London 1876 (in stock at the ÖNB )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Benjamin Boothby, see English Wikipedia
  2. ↑ a b c Howitt, Alfred William (1830-1908) on adbonline.anu.edu.au , accessed on May 28, 2010
personal data
SURNAME Howitt, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Howitt, Alfred William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Geologist, anthropologist and explorer
DATE OF BIRTH April 17, 1830
PLACE OF BIRTH Nottingham , England
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1908
Place of death Bairnsdale , Victoria , Australia