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John Winthrop Hackett was a well educated young man with high ideals but few prospects. He left his troubled homeland in Ireland and during Western Australia’s gold rush era, his four great interests – newspapers, politics, business and education – made him a passionate advocate for this State and for the establishment of the Commonwealth’s first free university.

Born in Ireland in 1848 and educated at Trinity College in Dublin, Winthrop Hackett was called to the Irish Bar but instead he boarded a ship bound for Australia in 1875. He had lived through the famine that sent Irish migrants fleeing across the world, had lost a beloved twin sister to tuberculosis and was resisting the pull of the church that had seen his younger brothers follow their father into the clergy and his sisters marry bishops.

Political upheavals and the knowledge that family land in Wicfklow would not provide a living for a well educated young man may also have contributed to the 27-year-old’s decision to seek his fortune in a distant young country with prospects. His close friend Dr James Battye would later observe that Hackett left Ireland because his democratic views were at odds with the official Irish political outlook.

It is sometimes hard to reconcile the younger Winthrop Hackett with the elder statesman, cultural commissar and University Chancellor he became in the decades before his death in 1916, says Professor Geoffrey Bolton.

Professor Bolton, an historian (and UWA graduate) sees the young Hackett as “a whimsical, out-at-elbows figure, too fond of a joke, at times almost garrulous, and discreetly flirtatious with the young ladies whom he thought himself too plain and too impoverished to court.”

But Winthrop Hackett was ambitious, articulate and drawn to newspapers, universities, politics and business – a quartet of interests that would weave sometimes interlocking threads through his life. When a former Trinity College colleague became warden of the University of Melbourne’s Trinity College, he invited Hackett to join him as sub-warden. The post offered free board and lodging but no pay.

Hackett worked hard to establish the college, acting as tutor in law, logic and political economy, while contributing articles to The Age and Melbourne Review and making two unsuccessful attempts to enter politics.

However, with an oversupply of lawyers, prospects for a secure income in Melbourne were limited and after visiting Western Australia, Hackett took up the lease on a sheep station in the Gascoyne.

It was 1883, a time when the economy was based on wheat and sheep. However, Hackett’s association with the 8,000-hectare Wooramel Station was brief. In The Fifth Sparrow, author Mollie Skinner relates that after five months, he left his manager in charge, promising to return in time for lambing. Informed that lambing had already begun, he is reputed to have retorted: “Put it off!”

Clearly happy to abandon threats of drought and the multiple problems of station life, Hackett headed for the capital where he received an offer that would shape the rest of his life: Charles Harper, owner of the tri-weekly West Australian newspaper, needed a partner to run the paper that later became a daily, with Hackett as editor.

The 1885 discovery of alluvial gold, first in the Kimberley, then at Southern Cross, wrought dramatic changes in the ‘Cinderella’ State. As gold fever took hold and more of the unforgiving landscape was explored, prospectors were soon digging in the richest square mile of gold-bearing ore on Earth.

It was the 1890s, and Hackett was in a position to influence events as the proprietor of an influential newspaper. While some of the early battles he fought through newspaper editorials were dubious, experience and age would mellow his views. As his status and influence grew, he increasingly sought consensus.

Nominated for the Legislative Council in 1890, Hackett served as a Council member for 25 years and became part of inaugural WA Premier John Forrest’s inner circle. The two shared bold visions for the West: of transport networks and ports, agricultural development and a water pipeline to the booming Goldfields.

In the Australian Dictionary of Biography , Lyall Hunt writes: “The great theme was development. The gold rush trebled Western Australia’s population between 1892 and 1900. Posts and telegraphs, railways, hospitals, harbours, water supplies and schools had to be provided, and Hackett gave consistent publicity. His backing was crucial in winning parliamentary approval in 1896 of C. Y. O’Connor’s plan to pump water to the Eastern Goldfields from the Darling Range. Detractors derided the ‘Forrest-Hackett curse’ until silenced by its successful completion in 1903. Forrest’s other grand scheme – to use the men and monies of the gold rush to settle a ‘bold yeomanry’ on the land – also had Hackett’s support. His paper backed the Homestead Act (1893) and Land Act (1898), the Agricultural Bank Act (1894) and the Bureau of Agriculture which provided land, capital and scientific advice for farmers.”

Although he had rejected life as an Anglo-Irish clergyman, Hackett was a strong supporter of the Church of England. He reminded his fellow citizens that the colony’s new-found wealth brought responsibilities for the less fortunate, and church initiatives he supported included a hospice for the dying, a children’s home and other charities.

Hackett’s son, the much decorated General Sir John Hackett (who later became principal of King’s College in London) would later recall going to Sunday matins in a horse-drawn open carriage.

“I can almost taste the boiled sweets produced in my mother’s gloved hand and handed around to keep us quiet during the sermon, and I can remember one of my sisters so pleased to see her father coming round with the plate that she joined him in the aisle … hanging on the tail of his frock coat.”

Following Hackett’s bequest to UWA, his second largest legacy was to the Church of England.

In A Veritable Augustus : the life of John Winthrop Hackett, Alexander Collins observes that Hackett was involved in a wide range of issues, including social reforms, votes for women and political rights. In his Murdoch University PhD thesis, Dr Collins also notes that his subject was an environmentalist well before it became popular to be so.

“With age he realised that he was more fortunate in life than many others … This resulted in him speaking out passionately in respect of amending various legislation he considered out-dated, while several of his parliamentary detractors only desired the preservation of the status quo to retain their influential status in society,” wrote Dr Collins.

When on 1 January 1901 six colonies united to create the Commonwealth, the federation was hailed by Forrest and Hackett who had been WA delegates to the National Australian Conventions through the 1890s. Both, however, held reservations about the conditions of entry.

However during the Conventions, Hackett had impressed fellow delegates. Prime Minister Alfred Deakin considered his speeches to be “admirable both in diction and delivery and in finish of style … He was certainly one of the most well-informed, critical and capable members of the Convention”. When Western Australia voted in favour of joining the Commonwealth, Hackett editorialised: “The [referendum] vote taken yesterday … seals the bond which gives a united Australia to the world and launches a new nation on its historical career…”

While as a young man Hackett may have awkwardly flirted with young ladies he felt too impoverished to court, in 1905, at 57, the confirmed bachelor and owner of an opulent 25-roomed mansion at 248 St Georges Terrace decided it was time to marry.

Deborah Vernon Drake-Brockman, at 18, came from one of those influential families and is reputed to have been as strong-minded as her mother Grace Bussell who, with stockman Sam Isaacs, had braved a storm at sea to rescue passengers from a stricken vessel in 1876.

Described by her family as “an individualist from an early age”, the spirited teenager married against opposition from some of her family who (according to author Molly Skinner) believed that “no matter how brilliant, wealthy and charming he might be, the fact remained that he was not a member of one of the State’s precious ‘first families …”

The young bride turned the Hackett home into a lively centre for social gatherings and Hackett was soon noting that it was impossible to get through his work because marriage “took at least a couple of hours out of your working day”.

In The Turning Wheel , Deborah’s brother Geoffrey Drake-Brockman recalled that his young sister became a great hostess: “They gave many wonderful parties in their St George’s Terrace home. I recall a dinner to welcome the arrival of our first professors, to take up their chairs at the new University of Western Australia – Murdoch, Shann, Ross, Dakin, Whitfeld, Wilsmore, Woolnough, Patterson.”

Hackett would have relished the arrival of the first professors at the university he had played a pivotal role in establishing.

When the subject of a local university was raised in the 1890s, Hackett had argued: “The education of the boys and girls of the community may be regarded as an essential form of political insurance.”

To those who suggested WA could not afford a tertiary institution, he retorted: “The time is coming when we cannot afford to be without a university. It is not only for the education of our young people but also for research work … A university would be of inestimable service in helping the development of our natural resources.”

During parliamentary debates he championed teaching on “the practical questions of life, upon which after all, we depend for our daily bread” rather than the “study of the dead languages” that catered for society’s elite.

In 1911, the year in which he became Sir Winthrop Hackett, the University Bill was introduced in Parliament and during its second reading no member spoke against it.

Dr James Battye (the State Library’s first Chief Librarian) recalled in 1945 that Hackett “always kept before him the idea that such a University should be free and so afford equal opportunities to rich and poor alike …” The University Bill was passed on 3 February 1911. However, when UWA accepted its initial 184 students in 1913, Hackett had only a few years to live. The establishment of UWA would be his last major achievement.

A year after the University opened its doors, Sir Winthrop was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. He was also appointed inaugural Chancellor and President of the Guild of Undergraduates.

When he died on 19 February, 1916, Sir Winthrop Hackett was considered as ‘Father of the House’, being the longest-serving member of WA’s Legislative Council. While he had relished the power of being a newspaper proprietor, it was widely acknowledged that he had used that power wisely. As a passionate advocate for Western Australia, he had unashamedly used his paper to advance the establishment of this University, the WA Museum and Art Gallery, the State Library, the Perth Zoo and King’s Park – civic institutions he felt this capital city deserved.

Hackett’s funeral in February was held on what his newspaper would describe as a hot and suffocating day. The bells of St George’s Cathedral – in which the Hackett family were such familiar figures – brought the city to a standstill, it reported.

Sir John Forrest returned to attend his friend’s funeral, and the State governor and parliamentarians were among those who gathered at the cathedral. Archbishop Charles Riley, who had known the distinguished parishioner and philanthropist for 21 years, observed: “he loved work, he loved to lead and therefore liked to be in office and he had a large vision”.

When he was knighted, The Sunday Times wrote: “If the privilege of being addressed as Sir Something or other when the great majority of your countrymen are called Mr Smith, Brown, or Robinson is a fit reward for three decades of public service, no man is better entitled to it then Hackett, K.B. …

“As journalist, as politician, as churchman, as patron of art and science, as co-worker in many useful public understandings, he has done not a little to make the community what it is …

“The West has plenty of sporting publicans, dozens of absentee landlords and globe-trotting sheep kings, and thousands of persons in various walks of life whose sole ambition is to make a fortune here and spend it somewhere else, but the number of its public-spirited citizens who love the country for its own sake and strive to leave it better than they found it, is lamentably few. One of the few – and one of the best of them – is John Winthrop Hackett.”

Hackett’s bequest to UWA funded the establishment of Hackett studentships and bursaries, the construction of Winthrop Hall and the Hackett Buildings. His bequest included funds to build a chapel in St George’s College.

The last word should deservedly go to Alexander Collins, whose thesis provided much information used in this article. “As a newspaper proprietor, politician and philanthropist, Hackett is without peer in Western Australian history. Subsequent generations have received the benefit of his commitment to the ideas he advocated throughout his public life. Given the significance of his initiation of and generous support for Western Australia’s fledgling university, and his backing of other cultural institutions, it was no surprise when he was referred to later as the ‘Cecil Rhodes of Western Australia’, as well as in his own lifetime as, a ‘Veritable Augustus’.”

Published in Uniview Vol. 31 No. 3 Spring 2012