William HUTCHINS

HUTCHINS, WILLIAM (b. Ansley, Warwickshire, England, 26 Nov 1792; d. Hobart, Van Diemen's Land, 4 June 1841). First Anglican archdeacon of VDL.

William Hutchin's father, Joseph, was vicar of Ansley from 1779 to 1829 but his grandfather, Thomas, was husbandman for Sir Roger Newdigate; William was of relatively humble birth. He attended Atherstone Grammar School to study under James Charters, once Fellow of King's Cambridge with Simeon. Hutchins graduated BA from Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1818 ninth wrangler in mathematics. Among his friends were evangelicals Blunt, Sim, Scholefield, and Broughton who, as first bp of Australia nominated Hutchins as archdeacon. He was made deacon at Norwich in May 1821 and priest by Bp Pelham of Lincoln at Marylebone in June 1822.

From 1819 to 1824, Hutchins taught at Cambridge and assisted his father. In March 1824, he became curate in Huddersfield under James Franks, known since Cambridge days. In March 1825 he went to Wirksworth, Derbyshire, as curate in charge and thence to Kirk Ireton in March 1829, where he received from Sir George Grey in Feb 1836 an invitation to go to Van Diemen's Land.

Armed with letters Patent signed by William IV and in the company of Sir John Franklin, the new governor, Hutchins landed in Hobart early Jan 1837. He made an immediate impression as 'a plain and practical man, gentlemanly but without affectation or cant'. He immediately sponsored a new evangelical paper, the Guardian, which appeared monthly until he became too busy to maintain its publication. He took over the superintendence of government schools, then run by the Anglican church. He chaired a committee to investigate the King's Orphan Schools at Newtown. At the end of Jan he began a visitation of all chaplaincies in the colony; he was to do this four times each year till his death.

Throughout 1837, besides all his other work, Hutchins was vigorously opposing, and then amending, the provisions of a Church Bill which became law in Nov. Despite the handicaps imposed by the Act, Hutchins built and manned eighteen parish churches in five years. For two years he also fought for his schools, opposing their secularisation, but the Presbyterian lobby's strength and the governor's vacillation defeated him. Hutchins wrote to his brother, Edward, 'Our truly amiable Lieut-Governor sadly wants decision and firmness; we really have no government in the proper sense of the term'. He regretted that the public schools he had improved diminished in number and influence while church schools flourished.

Hutchins macle many wise contributions in the Executive Council, especially on the treatment of convicts and Aborigines. He gave the Anglican church in VDL a fresh vision of its role in society and a disciplined zeal in performing it. Had he lived to be bp, his valuing of 'nominal Christianity' as a source of moral instruction and an opportunity for evangelism would have influenced Tasmanian history markedly. His sudden death of a heart attack, just prior to him and his new bride, Rachel Palmer, moving house, shocked the colony. On the day of his funeral, 8 June 1841, the mourners met and founded a school to perpetuate his good name.

Through that school and through the parish ministry which he initiated, Hutchins continues to make his mark on the community. His repeated warning that education without moral instruction could well be dangerous is being heard again 150 years later.

D B Clarke, William Hutchins (Hobart 1986)

DUDLEY CLARKE