- page -
http://www.cdu.edu.au/cdupress
Go Back >> List of Entries
to his father’s employment, Sowden attended several bush schools during his formative years. He showed promise
and was offered a position as a pupil teacher. But his interests lay in journalism and shortly afterward he sought a
position as a printer’s assistant on the Castlemaine Representative and the Mount Alexander Mail.
In 1879, Sowden moved to Moonta in South Australia where he worked as a reporter on the Yorke’s Peninsula
Advertiser. A year later, he became associate editor of the Port Adelaide News. When in 1881, Sowden joined the
staff of the Adelaide Register, his career gained prominence.
Sowden accompanied an official parliamentary party to the Northern Territory in 1882. He wrote reports during
his visit for the Argus and the Sydney Morning Herald and his now famous book The Northern Territory as it Is,
is an amalgamation of these reports. His descriptions of both the social and physical environment in the Territory
came at a time when little was known about life in Northern Australia and scant documentation did little to remedy
this.
Sowden was not afraid to air his political views. Although never a member of any political party, his free-trade
liberal leanings are readily recognised in his writings. He liked the limelight and his forthrightness brought him
enemies as well as admirers. He is described as being ruddy-faced, direct, pugnacious and an engaging speaker.
In 1886, Sowden married Letitia Adams of Melbourne. They had two sons before Letitia’s death in 1928.
In 1929, he married Margaret Suttie of Mosman, New South Wales. After his expeditions to the north as a
parliamentary reporter, he was promoted to the position of the Register’s chief parliamentary reporter. He became
famous for his column ‘Echoes from the Smoking Room by a Scribbler’ which included reminiscences of his
journeys north.
In June 1918, Sowden was knighted for his services to the war effort and journalism. He had been politically
active during the Boer War and the First World War. In 1922, he retired from his career in journalism and moved
to Victor Harbour, South Australia, where he lived until his death. He died on 10 October 1943 and was buried
with Anglican rites.
J Sadler, Some Annals of Adelaide, 1933; Adelaide Advertiser, 7 September 1886, 3 June 1918, 11 October 1943; Adelaide, Truth, 4 December
1916, 8 June 1918; Adelaide, Observer, 27 March 1926.
ROBYN MAYNARD, Vol 1.
SPENCER, (Sir) WALTER BALDWIN (1860–1929), anthropologist, biologist and administrator, was born
in Manchester, England, on 23 June 1860. His father, Reuben Spencer, married Martha Circuit in 1858 and
Baldwin was the second of eleven children. Reuben, an active Congregationalist, became managing director of
John Rylands and Sons, cotton-spinners and manufacturers. Upon Reuben’s death in 1901, he bequeathed his
family a considerable fortune.
Baldwin attended Old Trafford School, followed by a year at the Manchester School of Art. He entered Owens
College (Manchester University) in 1879, becoming a committed evolutionary biologist. Winning a scholarship
to Exeter College, he abandoned his Manchester course and entered Oxford in 1881. His professor, H N Moseley,
had visited Australia as a naturalist on the Challenger scientific voyage. Moseley encouraged interest in ethnology
and Spencer attended lectures by E B Tylor, founder of British academic anthropology. After graduation with a
first-class science degree in 1884, Spencer taught and researched in the biology laboratory; election to Lincoln
College Fellowship followed.
Spencer also assisted Moseley and Tylor to transfer the Pitt-Rivers ethnographic collection from London to its
new Oxford Museum. His experience of classifying artefacts proved useful in his later role of Honorary Director
of the National Museum of Victoria (1899–1928). Both these men were influential referees in obtaining Spencer’s
appointment as foundation Professor of Biology at the University of Melbourne.
Aged 26 upon his appointment, Spencer married Mary Elizabeth (Lillie) Bowman and arrived in Melbourne
before the 1887 academic year. He set about energetically to design and erect the biology building and immersed
himself in university life. He encouraged student activities as founder of the science society and as sponsor of a
women’s club. His sustained promotion of undergraduate sport eventually led him, through foundation presidency
of the sports union, to presidency of the Victorian Football League (1919–26). Spencer’s department became an
important graduate research centre. He linked departmental activities with those of the Field Naturalists’ Club of
Victoria and the Royal Society of Victoria, on whose committees he was prominent. An exponent of inter-colonial
co-operation, he also was associated closely with the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science,
and was congress president at the 1921 meeting.
Spencer’s administrative skills resulted in his election to the then most senior university executive post,
chairman of the professorial board (1903–11). During this period, he also arranged building expansion at the
National Museum of Victoria. His university role is notable for the fact that his department was the first in any
Australian university to which women were appointed to Lecturer and Associate Professor status.
Spencer accompanied the 1894 Horn Scientific Exploring Expedition to Central Australia. Because of friction
between members, he acted as both negotiator and editor for all the Horn expedition volumes. His own influential
contribution included the definition of the biogeographic distribution of Australian fauna. His meeting with the
Alice Springs postmaster, F J Gillen, rekindled his anthropological interest and they established an enduring
partnership.
In 1896, he joined Gillen for intensive fieldwork at Alice Springs. Their resulting publication of The Native
Tribes of Central Australia (1899), was hailed in Europe as one of the most important anthropological books ever
published. It influenced theories on social evolution and explanations for the origins of art and ritual, particularly
those of Sir James Frazer, Emile Durkheim and writers on European prehistoric cave art.