William Ellison-Macartney

William Ellison-Macartney

Sir William Gray Ellison-Macartney (born June 7, 1852 in Dublin , Ireland , † December 4, 1924 in London ) was a British politician and Governor of Tasmania and Western Australia .

Life

William was born the son of John William Ellison , a Conservative MP in the British House of Commons . As a result of an inheritance from his wife's family, Williams' father adopted the double name Ellison-Macartney in 1859. William went to Exeter College , Oxford , where he studied law and history. In 1878 he was admitted to the bar. He supported Ireland's membership of Great Britain and became a member of the Orange Order .

Ellison-Macartney was elected by the Antrim South constituency in the 1885 general election and was a Conservative member of the House of Commons. In 1886 he was involved in the founding of the Irish Unionist Party , for which he worked as a Whip in the following years . In 1890 he was appointed Secretary of the Admiralty, an important post in the British government at the time. He had to give up the post in 1900 after a government reshuffle, but was compensated with a membership in the Privy Council . In 1897 he married Ettie Myers Scott, a sister of the polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott , whom Ellison-Macartney later supported again and again; while still on his expedition to the South Pole , Scott referred to him in letters as a "brick".

In December 1912 Ellison-Macartney was appointed Governor of Tasmania and knighted as Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in January 1913 . Because of his clearly pro-British stance and the rejection of the Home Rule , his appointment met with some suspicion in Tasmania. During his tenure, he was sometimes poisonous about the situation in Tasmania. In 1915 he wrote about the budget deliberations that the MPs were apparently incapable of any objective criticism and were only concerned about their well-paid parliamentary seats.

In 1917 after his time in Tasmania, like his predecessor Harry Barron , he was appointed Governor of Western Australia. As in Tasmania, he worked there as a Freemason and was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Perth .

In 1920 Ellison-Macartney returned to England, where he died on December 4, 1924 in the London borough of Chelsea .

literature

• Michael Roe: Macartney, Sir William Gray Ellison . In: Douglas Pike (Ed.): Australian Dictionary of Biography . Melbourne University Press, Carlton (Victoria) 1966–2012 (English).

Web links

• Knights and Dames: DOO – FOW at Leigh Rayment's Peerage