Thomas Gilbert, a loyal and faithful believer in the colony established according to the Wakefield principle, was the first colonial storekeeper in the colony who took his instructions from the South Australian Colonization commissioners who had appointed him on a salary of £100 per year.
Ironically, this was a most fitting appointment for Gilbert because his family heritage stretched back for more than a hundred years in London, where five succeeding generations of his forefathers had been associated with England’s second-most important guild, The Worshipful Company of Grocers.
Gilbert Street takes its name from this unremarkable and steady man. It is one of the ‘lesser’ streets, closer to the periphery of the town plan, in the south-west quadrant of the city of Adelaide, and is paired with Gilles Street (after Osmond Gilles). Both streets are parallel to and one street in from South Terrace. Their position on the Adelaide plan probably results from the fact they were named after two of the less prominent functionaries in the new colony who were both on the Street Naming Committee. For Gilbert and Gilles it may have been a matter of queuing up towards the end of the committee meeting to be included among the last few streets to be decided, at the extremities of the city.
It is tempting to think that Gilbert may have been appointed after what were protracted negotiations on what was likely to be an erroneous assumption that as a fully qualified guild member of the Grocers’ Company he was very likely to be a good storekeeper.
His background was much more significant than described by Douglas Pike who, in Paradise of dissent, rather summarily dismissed him as a ‘member of a firm of opticians’. Gilbert was, by contrast, born into an engineering dynasty, which had been scientific instrument and spectacle manufacturers for the maritime industries, including the East India Company since the early- eighteenth century. The skills and engineering craftsmanship within the family stretched well beyond the making of spectacles for clerks in the company offices of Calcutta, although this was an important arm of the family business.
Thomas Gilbert’s great-great-grandfather, John Gilbert, began the dynasty in 1709 when apprenticed through the Grocers’ Company to a Mr John Johnson 3rd John Gilbert 1st as he was known, was fully qualified and free of the indenture by 1717. From then until 1752 he operated his business at Postern Row, Tower Hill, where he made sundials and telescopes. A succession of Gilberts followed the same path. The proliferation and entrenchment of the Gilbert manufacturing business culminates with Thomas Gilbert’s generation, in which he and two of his brothers were all indentured at some point to the Grocers’ Company through their father, William Gilbert 2nd. Brother William Dormer and Thomas formed a partnership on the retirement of their father in 1813. Their business became known as W & T Gilbert, and it conducted operations between 1813 and 1828. On the one hand they continued their father’s contract as spectacle makers for the Honourable East India Company. On the other, however, and more distinctively, they won contracts from the shipping industry and elsewhere for the manufacture of sextants, barometers, telescopes, microscopes, vernier protractors, compasses, kaleidoscopes and other miscellaneous but finely engineered instruments.
Just how Thomas Gilbert came to attach himself to the South Australian movement is not known. Given that he and his brother were in close touch with the East India Company offices it is entirely feasible that he heard about the proposed colony from either James Mill or his son John Stuart Mill, who were employed at that time by the company. More likely, however, is the idea that his financial circumstances might have driven him to it, or perhaps some of his sympathetic religious associates like Robert Gouger or John Brown encouraged him. In 1828 both Thomas and his brother William were declared to be financially insolvent.
This was a huge setback for the brothers and led to the dissolution of their partnership. Thomas was forced to look for other means of support. This accounts, at least in part, for his sudden and ultimately protracted interest in the South Australia experiment. It is said that Thomas Gilbert was among those to show an early interest in the colony, although his name does not appear in association with the project until it had become a potential reality, immediately after the passage of the South Australia Act in August 1834. Thenceforth, those with a desire to emigrate began to frequent No. 7 John Street, The Adelphi, London, where the South Australian Association, under the leadership of its secretary Gouger, had taken rooms. This venue became the focal point for all the activities to follow, before the first ships departed for the colony in early 1836. Those hoping to gain employment from the commissioners successively made themselves available at these premises – Thomas Gilbert included.
On 29 August 1834 the keenest aspirants formed the South Australian Literary and Scientific Association. In and around the Adelphi, Gilbert was visible, circumspect and enthusiastic without being too brash. This would later work in his favour when it was time to mete out the appointments.
Towards the end of 1835 the South Australian Colonization commissioners began appointing all the public officers who were to go to the colony. Whether or not they knew that Gilbert had been declared a bankrupt is not known, although it is hard to imagine they were unaware of it. It is possible the commissioners were reluctant to appoint Gilbert, even though he had been in strong support of the project for so long.
Gilbert was formally appointed on 3 March.
Very little seems to be known about Thomas Gilbert’s personal circumstances prior to him joining Gouger and the others. He was, however, known to be a bachelor and there are several references in the literature to his non-marital status. He was a man of some religious conviction and sense of propriety.
Gilbert departed London for Australia on 20 March 1836. His instructions as Colonial Storekeeper were explicit. He was sent out on the Cygnet, the second of the two surveying vessels. Captain Rolls was in command and the Deputy Surveyor George Stricklan Kingston was in charge of all employees of the Commission. Beyond that, Gilbert was the next most senior employee on board. Being of religious disposition he was designated the ship’s preacher. He was obviously respected in this regard and he continued to exercise some religious authority in the colony.
The Cygnet finally arrived in Nepean Bay, Kangaroo Island on 11 September 1836. At the mouth of what was to be named the Cygnet River, Gilbert supervised the unloading of all the stores which were not needed by the surveying team. The gardening labourers who had also come out on the Cygnet were instructed to secure the stores in temporary buildings and immediately plant some vegetable beds so as to capitalise on the spring rains.
Very soon after, unfortunately, Gilbert became embroiled in a controversy over the lawlessness which had broken out among some of the South Australian Company men and crew. Three ships from the company had already arrived at Kangaroo Island and by nefarious means some of their men procured access to enough rum to get themselves into trouble. Samuel Stephens, Manager of the South Australian Company, rather capriciously accused Gilbert of distributing the rum to his company men. A later enquiry revealed that Gilbert had indeed exchanged some rum for vegetables, which had been grown by some of the runaway whalers already living on Kangaroo Island. He had also issued spirits to some of his own men, but that hardly made him culpable for the licentiousness and derelict behaviour of the company men. The truth was that a private trader named Hallett was selling grog privately, and later in October, Captain Nelson of the company ship Emma also set up a grog shop. Beyond that, Gilbert had not been involved in any way with the dissolute behaviour. However, his lack of experience in holding such an enterprise to account immediately came under notice, if only in some almost trivial ways.
Settled in Adelaide, Gilbert began to grow in importance. As well as being the Colonial Storekeeper, Governor Hindmarsh offered him the position of Postmaster General, which he took up on 10 April 1837 on a salary of £30 per year. He accepted the position happily, but as the responsibilities of Colonial Storekeeper grew commensurately with the exponential growth in the population of new immigrants, he found the responsibility too exhausting and relinquished the Postmaster General role in the middle of 1838.
The storekeeper’s house, the store and the first post office were the first recognisable buildings in the new settlement of Adelaide, immediately noticeable on the northern side of the River Torrens and under the hill which makes up part of the North Adelaide Golf Course today. The buildings were not far north of the Torrens Weir as it is known today, and as this was on the route from the port to the City, they were the first structures to be encountered as people approached the township. Gilbert’s job was to secure the seed bank, the explosives and the iron stores and to mete out supplies of goods, including food at sensible but profitable prices.
The first few months in the colony saw the dispute arise over the site that Colonel Light had chosen for the city. Governor Hindmarsh and representatives of the South Australian Company thought it ludicrous to plant a city so far from the coast. They wanted it at Encounter Bay or at the very least somewhere near Port Adelaide. Colonel Light stood his ground and it was surveyed on the Adelaide Plains some ten kilometres (six miles) from the coast and beneath the rising escarpment of the Mount Lofty Ranges.
At a meeting for those holding land orders it was moved by Charles Mann and seconded by Gilbert that Colonel Light’s choice was carried by 218 votes to 137. Morphett accounted for 115 of the ‘yes’ votes because of the large number of proxy votes he held in his position as a private agent. Gilbert only had one vote, suggesting he held only one preliminary land order before coming to the colony. This adds weight to the suggestion that he had joined the South Australian Association while in impoverished financial circumstances. But at the subsequent sale of further city sections he obviously acquired two more. Gilbert bought ‘town acre’ 383 in Gouger Street and acres 1030 and 1031 in Stanley Street, North Adelaide.
Presumably by the middle of 1838 he had turned at least one of the allotments over because in September he joined David McClaren, John Barton Hack, John E. Walker and Boyle Travers Finniss as directors of a new company called the Harbour Survey Company. The company was floated with capital of £300, which was divided into thirty shares at £10 each. The directors leased the Rapid from the South Australian Colonization commissioners and engaged Colonel Light as surveyor.
Thomas Gilbert was not one to assert himself at the expense of others, but he had the confidence of the more radical elements among the Commission’s officers in the colony. Governor Hindmarsh appointed him a magistrate on 6 July 1837 as he did a number of other colonial employees. Gilbert took this role very seriously and could often be found in attendance at the bench.
He was an inaugural member of the South Australian Club, which first met in a building on North Terrace in September 1838. As storekeeper, he was expected to familiarise himself with the local materials, especially those on government land. This led to his appointment to a board that had to report on quarrying, lime burning and brickmaking in the parklands in 1838.
He was also asked to report on the proposed Government House. He joined Robert Gouger, Light, Mann, Finniss, Morphett and John Barton Hack in the establishment of an alternative newspaper in the colony – The Southern Australian.
Perhaps the most telling thing about Thomas Gilbert’s life in the province of South Australia was his vulnerability to exploitation and his ineptitude in keeping the colonial accounts. The task of managing so many items, products and supplies in a new colony was in some ways beyond him and fraught with problems. Gilbert was not particularly effective in accounting for the distribution and sale of the goods for which he was responsible. Both Resident Commissioner James Hurtle Fisher and Osmond Gilles, the Colonial Treasurer, were pursuing personal commercial activities while holding public office. This compromised both Gilbert and Colonel Light on several occasions and when Governor Gawler arrived he was horrified to find the storekeeper’s accounts in disarray.
When the board was informed of these problems they admitted that ‘some part of the irregularity which has occurred … may be fairly traced to the acquiescence of the Commissioners in the temporary conjunction of commercial pursuits with official business’. On this occasion Gilbert was saved from any embarrassment because of the esteem with which Governor Gawler held him and because Gawler was such a religious man. It is tempting to suggest that their mutual interests in this respect might have been the reason for such a lighthanded rebuke.
In 1844 he agreed to take on more and to perform the duties of Colonial Engineer’s Storekeeper. Then, in 1846, he had duties in the Audit Office added to those of Colonial Storekeeper. Finally, in 1847 even more was added to his responsibilities and he was appointed Superintendent of West Terrace Cemetery, while retaining all previous duties. Naturally he was overwhelmed and as might be expected began showing signs of financial and managerial incompetence. To make matters worse there was even some malevolent suspicion he was misappropriating money. Unfortunately, any absolution which might have been granted earlier by Governor Gawler eventually dissipated following further irregularities.
Gilbert, however, retained and enjoyed the respect of a wide circle of friends throughout his life. He finally retired as Colonial Storekeeper at the end of 1854. His resignation was accepted in early 1855. He retired on a pension of £200 per year and when the Superannuation Act in the South Australian Parliament was repealed in 1860 only Gilbert and Captain Lipson were provided for in perpetuity by the previous conditions. These were very generous terms for any government employee of the times and way ahead of similar governments elsewhere.
Gilbert remained in Adelaide throughout his retirement ‘in a tranquil and happy state until the end’. He died in his 87th year on 30 May 1873. Tributes poured in to acclaim his long and fruitful life. His brother Henry and his nephew, Mr W. B. Gilbert, made special mention of his optical experiments to improve vision ware for the customers of the East India Company. There, scientific progress with lenses was so groundbreaking that the British Government waived the excise normally due on such work.
Thomas Gilbert is buried in West Terrace Cemetery; fittingly just opposite the western end of Gilbert Street, in Adelaide.
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