John Hutt

John Hutt, Governor of Western Australia

John Hutt (born July 24, 1795 in London , † April 9, 1880 in Chelsea ) was the second governor of Western Australia from 1839 to 1846.

Early years

John Hutt was the oldest of 13 children born to Richard Hutt and his wife Gilly. He was trained at Christ's Hospital on Ryde , Isle of Wight and in 1815 inherited Appley House in Ryde, Isle of Wight. Around 1813 he worked as an employee in the East India Company during the presidential term of Madras , in Nellore and from 1818 to 1821 he was a registrar in one of the four provincial courts in Chittoor in the former Indian North Arcot district. From there he returned to England in 1826.

Australia

Like his brother William Hutt , John Hutt was heavily involved in building the colony of South Australia . There he was Superintendent for Immigration in the South Australian Colonization Commission .

He succeeded Sir James Stirling , served as governor of Western Australia on January 1, 1839, and held that office until February 18, 1846. Politically, he was liberal and one of his first actions as governor was membership of the Western Australian Legislative Council by four non-official members. He oversaw the settlement and regulation of the land, in particular the granting and allocation of land.

Hutt's attitude towards the Aborigines of Western Australia was entirely different from that of the Stirling and most of the settlers. Relations between settlers and the Aborigines had deteriorated greatly in the last few years of the Stirling government, with the Aborigines fighting with spears, stealing from houses and occasionally murdering settlers. Stirling's response was an attempt to suppress the Aborigines through severe punishment. In contrast, Hutt's policies included protecting the Aborigines, and even providing them with education. This treatment made him very unpopular with the settlers who lived on the Aboriginal borders and believed that they needed more protection than the Aborigines. Hutt developed a personal interest in the language and culture of the Aborigines. He helped fund a dictionary by George Fletcher , one of the first attempts to describe the Native American language.

Hutt was a " ... radical idealist, he was singularly capable of learning by experience ". (German: radical idealist and he was able to learn through experiments). Towards the end of his tenure in 1846 he had much more support for his politics than before and The Swan River News wrote that he was a good governor, " ... a combination of judicious firmness and candour" "(German: .. a combination of legal firmness and frankness).

After quitting governorship earlier than planned, Hutt went back to England where he was apparently receiving more money. For a while he lived in the Royal Hospital Chelsea . He died, unmarried, on April 9, 1880 in his brother's house.

literature

• James Sykes Battye: Western Australia: A History from its Discovery to the Inauguration of the Commonwealth . Oxford University Press, London 1924.
• Julia Nicholas (1958): An evaluation of the work of John Hutt as Governor of the Colony of Western Australia from 1839-1846. Thesis, State Library of Western Australia.
• The Constitution Center of Western Australia: John Hutt 1839-1846 . In: Governors and Premiers of Western Australia . The Constitution Center of Western Australia, West Perth, Western Australia 2002, ISBN 0-7307-3821-3 .

Web links

• Hohn Hutt on Australian Dictionary of Biography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} A. C. Staples, 'Hutt, John (1795-1880)', pp. 575-577, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 1, Melbourne University Press, 1966, pp 575-577 Available online
2. ↑ http://www.ccentre.wa.gov.au/index.cfm?event=governorsJohnhutt Information on John Hutt