Ebenezer VICKERY

VICKERY, EBENEZER (b. London, England, 1 March 1827; d. Leeds, England, 20 Aug 1906). Wesleyan Methodist philanthropist and capitalist.

The son of a boot and shoe manufacturer, Vickery arrived in NSW in 1833 with his parents. He took over the family boot factory on his father's retirement in 1851. In the 1860s he diversified into shipping and the pastoral industry, acquiring huge pastoral stations near Moree and Narrabri. In the Wollongong district he acquired Keira, Coalcliff, and South Bulli mines, and became chairman of the South Greta Coal Company and the Mt Kembla Coal Company. A typical capitalist of the Victorian age, Vickery's hero was the enterprising George Stephenson, and his favourite book, Self-Help by Samuel Smiles. Vickery was a devout Wesleyan Methodist and an exemplar of John Wesley’s dictum: 'Religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches'. When Vickery died his personal wealth was estimated at over £509 000 making him one of the eight wealthiest men in New South Wales at that time.

His chief interest was the Sydney Central Methodist Mission, for which he purchased the Lyceum Theatre in Sydney, thus putting out of business a theatre, a hotel, a gambling saloon and two brothels. This complex was originally known as the 'Vickery Mission Settlement Buildings' and each Sunday was host to the largest congregations in the southern hemisphere. The name confirms that Vickery intended to keep control of the Buildings in his own name, that he intended it to be an adjunct to the CMM, and that he would donate it to the denomination in 1915, the centenary of Australian Methodism. His death in 1906 precipitated that outcome. It seems to have been his money which made possible the extraordinary variety of rescue operations mounted from the Mission: a home for 'Sisters of the People', based on the London sisterhood of the Methodist patriarch, Hugh Price Hughes; the 'Alexandra Rescue Home for Girls'; a 'Rescue Home for Waifs and Strays'; a 'Medical Retreat for the Treatment of Dipsomaniacs'. Historians today, however, cannot establish from extant financial records that he made the large donations claimed by his good friend, William George Taylor (q.v.), the superintendent of the Central Methodist Mission. He did generously support the Methodist Foreign and Home Missionary Societies and paid both for Methodist ministers to be brought from England and to be trained in NSW. Together with a wealthy Wesleyan minister, W Schofield, and a Wollongong business man, John Bright, Vickery contributed more than half the £300 000 which was the total income of the Home Mission Department in its first half century.

Vickery was also the principal donor to the construction of the Waverley Methodist Church which seated a thousand worshippers and was described as 'the most beautiful belonging to the denomination in the southern world'. He funded the Evangelists' Training Institute which sent out teams of young evangelists into the slums and hospitals, to the wharves and factories. In many parts of NSW the number of Methodists in church on Sundays at the turn of the century outnumbered those in Church of England churches. Methodism was at its zenith, and Vickery was its most munificent supporter whose ambitions for the Kingdom of God were greater even than his business ambitions. When informed of those who had been won to Christ or rescued from addictions through Methodist instrumentalities financed by himself, he would say quietly, 'I am very glad'.

Vickery also gave extensive financial help to a number of non-denominational church charities in Sydney: the YMCA (of which he was a founder and its treasurer until his death) the YWCA, the Sydney Rescue Society, the City Mission, and the British and Foreign Bible Society. He was an avid supporter of the temperance movement and a member of the Australian Protestant Defence Association and the Evangelical Council. He was treasurer of numerous committees which brought revivalist preachers and temperance campaigners to NSW. In 1905 he visited USA to study modern evangelistic methods.

Vickery's concern for the souls of his workmen and their families arose from deep religious conviction. By the end of 1901 he had spent in excess of £10 000 buying and equipping twelve large tents which were used for evangelistic rallies throughout NSW. Early in 1902 the sacred fire fell on Wollongong and the nearby coal mining villages. It was reported that there were 1500 conversions in Wollongong and 2734 in the entire Illawarra region. This was a sizeable proportion of the population, and is said to have altered the tone of conversation in the Mt Kembla mine:

'Profanity and licence gave place to purity of speech and sobriety of demeanour, and ribald songs to hymns of gladness and praise'. The cessation of swearing also threatened a cessation of production: horses employed in the mine for haulage could no longer 'understand their commands, they being unaccompanied by the usual emphasis'. The Vickery tent mission crusade reaped a harvest of 25 000 souls throughout rural NSW in 1902/3. With tears in his eyes, Vickery declared, 'I have never in my life made an investment that has brought in such a dividend as this already has done'.

Vickery was not always popular with his workmen, and indeed was pelted with stones when he visited Mt Kembla during the 1890 Maritime Strike. He was typical of those capitalists who refused to accept graciously the advent of unionism. He also shared the capitalist's penchant for minimising costs, opposing the proposed eight-hour day for miners and the minimum age of 14 for the employment of boys in mines. When debating in 1894 the Coal Mines Regulation Bill in the NSW Legislative Council (of which he was a member from 1887 until his death), he maintained that 'There is no class of men who are so well looked after as the miners ... the majority of miners work under conditions more wholesome and healthy than most other workmen do'. In spite of previous coal disasters at Ferndale and Bulli, state intervention in mine safety was beyond Vickery's comprehension. 'Do you think owners want their mines to explode?' he demanded.

Vickery was in the Legislative Council on 31 July 1902 when at 2.30pm he was handed a telegram informing him that a terrible explosion had taken many lives in the Mt Kembla Colliery. The blood drained from his face, and he had to be helped to his office in Pitt Street. He summoned to his side William George Taylor, the superintendent of the Central Methodist Mission. 'The whole man was bowed and stricken with grief,' Taylor recalled. 'In the midst of sobs that almost overpowered him he said, "Oh to think of this! Our one first and chief concern has always been the safety and the comfort of our men, and now to think of this." As we knelt side by side in that little room, it seemed to me as if I were permitted to see into the very soul of a good and of a great man'.

There have been few great men in Australian history. Was Vickery one of them? He was a great business man and manager. He was a great philanthropist - the greatest of his day in NSW. The view, now gaining credence through repetition that his later philanthropies may have been an expiation for the deaths of his workmen. in the 1902 mine disaster, is an interesting but unlikely and unprovable theory. He was a good Christian with a zeal for souls and a compassion for the needy. His was a great vision, to win Australia for Christ and facilitate the ascendancy of the denomination which he believed was the best expression of the Christian faith and the one best calculated to win souls through aggressive evangelism. His record with his employees was not so admirable, and his opposition to his own workmen's attempts to improve their lot through unionism and legislation on mine safety, is a regrettable trait. In 1906 Vickery was in California during the great earthquake. People sleeping in the room next door to him were killed. He survived untouched, only to die peacefully some months later in Leeds, the capital of English Methodism.

James Colwell, The Illustrated History of Methodism. Australia: 1812-1855 New South Wales and Polynesia 1856-1902 (Sydney, 1904); DEB; Gibbs, Shallard & Cos Illustrated Guide to Sydney, (facsimile of revised edition, 1882, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1981, p.38f); Memorandum and Articles of Association of E. Vickery and Sons, Limited, (Sydney, 1902); W F Morrison, The Aldine Centennial History of New South Wales (Sydney, 1888), vol 2, appendix, unpaginated; Stuart Piggin, Faith of Steel (Wollongong, 1984); Stuart Piggin and Henry Lee, The Mt Kembla Disaster (Melbourne, 1992); William George Taylor, The Life Story of an Australian Evangelist (London, 1920); Don Wright, The Mantle of Christ: A History of the Sydney Central Methodist Mission (Brisbane, 1984)

STUART PIGGIN