Strangways Terrace in North Adelaide is named after Thomas Bewes Strangways, one of the junior members of the Street Naming Committee and most likely a nominee of Governor John Hindmarsh, with whom he was closely associated.
By the time the Committee sat on 23 May 1837 Hindmarsh had already appointed Strangways a Justice of the Peace and a member of the Grand Jury, so his claim to be considered as a member of the Committee was not too fickle, especially as he was a substantial player in the purchase of land. There were at least sixteen town acres purchased against his name, some of which were for his older brother, Henry Bull Strangways, of Somerset.
Strangways and his younger brother, Giles Edward Strangways, arrived in South Australia on the HMS Buffalo in December 1836. They were cabin passengers attached to the Governor’s party. Thomas was 26 years old and Giles 22. Thomas was engaged to Jane Hindmarsh, the eldest daughter of the newly appointed Governor, who was also Captain of the ship. By the time the Buffalo arrived at Glenelg, Strangways had so obsequiously endeared himself to the Governor that he had become his right-hand man. Hindmarsh in return regarded him as an entirely appropriate suitor for his daughter because he came from a moderately wealthy established family of landed gentry in Shapwick, Somerset, whose lineage extended back to the Fox–Strangways dynasty of the Earls of Ilchester. Furthermore, Thomas and Giles’ mother, Elisheba, was the sister of Thomas Bewes MP, a well-known dignitary in Plymouth and a radical of highly developed liberal sensitivities in the Reform Parliament of 1832.
Bewes was also an inaugural member of the Reform Club. Such fashionable bloodlines would have pleased Hindmarsh, although he would not have been so favourably disposed to their uncle in the parliament. Hindmarsh had an expressed distaste for radicals! Thenceforth for the short time that Hindmarsh was in the colony, Strangways was aligned with the Governor’s faction against James Hurtle Fisher, Robert Gouger, Charles Mann, John Brown and the other liberals, which probably places him just outside the ‘pantheon of dissent’.
Strangways’ marriage to Jane Hindmarsh never materialised, possibly because Governor Hindmarsh was recalled in mid-1838, and although Mrs Hindmarsh and her three daughters remained in the colony until 1841, Thomas’ relationship fell away.
Once the first ships arrived in the colony and all newly appointed commissioned officers began to settle to the task of government, it didn’t take long for lines of conflict to be drawn between those who were motivated by greed and avarice and those of more noble ideological aspirations. Most, if not all were driven by some degree of opportunism. Some were driven by a quest for naked power; some were true believers; and others were only in it for the possibility of profit from land speculation. With Strangways aligned with Hindmarsh, presumably because of his relationship with Jane, he inadvertently placed himself on the losing side. The cracks between players began to surface from the outset, and by the time the Street Naming Committee met in May 1837 the chasm between Hindmarsh and Fisher’s radicals was permanent. Strangways’ short and inglorious rise to prominence, which remarkably but momentarily saw the 26-year-old offered the Acting Governorship, came to an abrupt end as Governor Hindmarsh hurriedly left the colony to save face after his recall. Hindmarsh’s unilateral grab for power from the Commissioner’s men failed miserably. He totally misread the political landscape.
Becoming Acting Colonial Secretary could have been the highest moment in the colony for Thomas Bewes Strangways, but presumably he realised he was out of his depth and stood aside. It meant that George Milner Stephen, who was made Advocate General, was technically the next in line to be offered the position, which explains the convoluted pathway he took to prominence in the colony. Strangways repaired to his pastoral holdings to count his livestock as his proposed marriage to Jane Hindmarsh evaporated.
Thomas Bewes Strangways was the second son of Henry Bull Strangways Snr and Elisheba Strangways (nee Bewes). Henry was a Justice of the Peace and Colonel Commandant of the Polden Hill (Somerset) Militia. Elisheba was the daughter of Harry Bewes of Beaumont House, Cornwall, which overlooks Sutton Harbour in Hoe. She and Henry married in 1807 and had seven children comprising four boys and three girls. Both families possessed heraldic arms.
Little is known of the early life of Thomas Bewes Strangways, but it is presumed the Strangways children may have been reasonably close to their mother’s Bewes family in Plymouth. Until Henry Bull Strangways Snr died in 1829 the family had lived for several generations in Shapwick House. At least four of the boys in the family had either military or naval connections. George Strangways rose to become a General; Edmund Ludlow a Commander in the East India Company (who then became Inspecting Commander at Plymouth); and Henry Bull Strangways Jnr was a military officer. Thomas was described as a gentleman who joined the 71st at Foot as an ensign by purchase. This was reported by the War Office on 23 November 1829.
Just why the two Strangways boys made their way to South Australia on the Buffalo is not entirely clear. It may have been through their mother’s brother, Thomas Bewes MP, that the family became aware of an opportunity to take up land in South Australia. He was in the parliament at the time the South Australia Bill was passed. Both boys joined Bingham Hutchinson and others in the Governor’s party on the Buffalo and were described as young gentlemen ‘of high feeling, of a very old family, and of moderate fortune’. It is known that Thomas took his bloodhound with him on board ship because once in the colony it was used to track down the runaway sailors from the Coromandel who took refuge in caves in the Adelaide Hills near Blackwood. Soon after Thomas arrived he also purchased two horses, possibly from the cargo that William George Field brought back to the colony from Sydney in mid-1837.
There seems to be no record as to why Strangways did not marry Jane Hindmarsh. It wasn’t until 18 August 1849 that he married Lavinia Albina Fowler, the daughter of the late Charles Fowler Esq of Staplegrove in the County of Somerset. Thomas and Lavinia were married by the Reverend James Pollitt in an Anglican ceremony on the property known as Vilner at Mount Torrens, in the Adelaide Hills. There being no Anglican church building in the vicinity at that time, this would have been one of the newly permitted ceremonies conducted on private property under modified regulations introduced by the Adelaide Diocese. By this time Strangways had become a significant landowner in the colony, with property at Inman Valley, the North Arm at Port Adelaide and elsewhere. His wealth had grown substantially from those first days when he had an interest either personally, or on behalf of others, in sixteen town acres.
Strangways’ personality is best revealed in a letter he wrote in response to the suggestion from the Home Office in London that South Australia take convict boys from Parkhurst Prison as labourers. This proposed initiative may have been in response to George Fife Angas’ complaint to Lord Henry Brougham that the government had not honoured its own legislation to send out labourers at the expense of the Emigration Fund. Strangways ‘begged’ to state his opinion that ‘the introduction of these boys would be no real benefit to the colony or to themselves, and [he] should not have any wish to employ them’, believing they would ‘relapse’ into criminal activities.
Thomas Bewes Strangways died on Wednesday 23 February 1859 at St Leonards, a beachside suburb near Glenelg. The cause of death was given as bronchitis. He was only 49 years of age.
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