D'Arcy Wentworth

D'Arcy Wentworth (born February 14, 1762 in Portadown , County Armagh , Ireland , † July 7, 1827 in Homebush , suburb of Sydney , Australia ) was a soldier, medic, civil servant and original landowner in the British convict colony of New South Wales .

Early life

D'Arcy Wentworth was the sixth of eight children of D'Arcy Wentworth and his wife Martha Dickson. The Wentworths came from an English aristocratic family . Before the young Wentworth embarked on a medical career, he served as a soldier with the First Armagh Company in Ireland. Wentworth is reported to have been held in high regard by his fellow citizens and to find himself in financial difficulties. He was charged with three road robberies and on December 12, 1778, acquitted of guilt in two cases and in the third case for lack of evidence. He described himself as innocent from the start and announced at the beginning of the trial that he would leave the country for Australia with the Second Fleet as inspector immediately after the verdict was pronounced .

emigration

The Second Fleet left England on January 19, 1790. On the ship, he was in love with a teenage female convict , Catherine Crowley. Wentworth arrived in Port Jackson on the ship Neptune on June 28, 1790 . On August 1, 1790, he and Catherine Crowley left on the ship Surprize to Norfolk Island . Before the Surpize arrived on Norfolk Island in August, William Charles Wentworth was born, one of the discoverers of the Blue Mountains crossing .

On Norfolk Island, D'Arcy Wentworth worked in a hospital and on September 10, 1791 he was appointed inspector of convicts. As he walked back in February 1796 to Sydney, he was appointed inspector convict the whole on April 7, 1796 penal colony named New South Wales. He then served in various capacities at three medical centers on Norfolk Island, Sydney and Parramatta , before taking on the post of chief surgeon of the civil medical department of New South Wales from February 1809.

Working life

In addition to his job as a medic, Wentworth devoted himself to public, economic and political life according to his interests and ruthlessly pursued his interests. In 1809 he was dismissed from his post as chief surgeon without explanation by incumbent Governor William Bligh . Then Wentworth played an important role in the so-called Rum Rebellion , which initiated a coup against Governor Bligh because the latter checked the land transfers of the colonial government - including the lands - and intended to repossess them if necessary. Bligh also intended to end the illegal trade in rum, which had become an unofficial currency in New Soth Wales operated by officers of the New South Wales Corps and Wentworth. In 1810, Wentworth and two other men were commissioned by Governor Lachlan Macquarie to build the so-called Rum Hospital in Sydney. In return for the construction, Wentworth received two licenses to sell rum; one in Rum Hospital and the other on a Sydney street. This generated a multiple of the cost of building the hospital. Wentworth also performed services for the police and in 1810 he was commissioner overseeing the collection of road tolls from Sydney to Parramatta.

D'Arcy was one of the earliest stockholders and directors of Australia's oldest bank, the Bank of New South Wales . It was founded in 1817 and is now part of Westpac Banking Corporation .

He was also cunning and successful in acquiring land when he was given 3.73 km² of land north of Homebush, an area near Strathfield . When he died, he had appropriated 543.2 km² of land.

Others

The suburb of Wentworthville in Sydney is named after him.

literature

• Michael Jones: Oasis in the West: Strathfield's first hundred years. Allen & Unwin Australia, North Sydney 1985, ISBN 0-86861-407-6 .
• John Ritchie: The Wentworths: Father and Son. The Miegunyah Press at Melbourne University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-522-84751-X .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c d} Wentworth, D'Arcy (1762-1827) on Australian Dictionary of Biography. Online Edition , accessed July 9, 2010
2. ↑ Ritchie: The Wentworths: Father and Son. Pp. 106 ff. (See literature)