Peter Lalor | |
|---|---|
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| 4thSpeaker of the Victorian Legislative Assembly | |
| In office 22 July 1880 – 29 September 1887 | |
| Premier | James Service Graham Berry Bryan O'Loghlen James Service Duncan Gillies |
| Preceded by | Sir Charles MacMahon |
| Succeeded by | Sir Matthew Davies |
| Member of theVictorian Legislative Assembly forGrant | |
| In office May 1877 – February 1889 | |
| Preceded by | Electorate established |
| Succeeded by | Harry Armytage |
| Member of theVictorian Legislative Assembly forSouth Grant | |
| In office March 1874 – April 1877 | |
| Preceded by | George Cunningham |
| Succeeded by | Electorate abolished |
| In office October 1859 – January 1871 | |
| Preceded by | John Bell Horatio Wills |
| Succeeded by | John Rout Hopkins Jonas Levien |
| Member of theVictorian Legislative Assembly forNorth Grenville | |
| In office November 1856 – August 1859 | |
| Preceded by | Electorate established |
| Succeeded by | Electorate abolished |
| Member of theVictorian Legislative Council | |
| In office November 1855 – March 1856 | |
| Preceded by | Electorate established |
| Succeeded by | Electorate abolished |
| Constituency | Ballarat |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1827-02-05)5 February 1827 Raheen,Laois,Ireland,United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland |
| Died | 9 February 1889(1889-02-09) (aged 62) Richmond,Colony of Victoria,British Empire |
| Citizenship | British subject |
| Nationality | Irish Australian |
| Political party | None |
| Alma mater | Carlow College Trinity College,Dublin |
Peter Fintan Lalor (/ˈlɔːlər/;[1] 5 February 1827 – 9 February 1889) was anIrish-Australian rebel and, later, politician, who rose to fame for his leading role in theEureka Rebellion, an event identified with the "birth of democracy" inAustralia.
Lalor was born at Tenakill House,Raheen, inQueen's County (later Laois) inIreland, which was part of theUnited Kingdom at the time. He was the son of Ann (née Dillon) andPatrick "Patt" Lalor, a landowner andsupporter of the abolition of tithes, who was a member of theBritish parliament (MP) in 1832–1835. Patt Lalor was the first Catholic MP from Queen's County since the anti-CatholicTest Acts of the 17th century. He had 11 children: Joseph Lalor, James Fintan Lalor, Richard Lalor, Mary Lalor, Patrick Lalor, Thomas Lalor, Catherine Lalor, Margrett Ellen Lalor, Jerome Lalor, John Lalor and William A. Lalor Sr., of whom Peter was the youngest.
The eldest brother wasJames Fintan Lalor, who was later involved in theYoung Ireland movement and the unsuccessfulYoung Irelander Rebellion of 1848. Another brother,Richard Lalor, also became a member of the British Parliament, representing theParnellite nationalist party. Their mother died on 4 June 1835 and Patt Lalor later remarried, to Ellen Mary Anne Loughnan, with whom he had no children.
Peter Lalor was educated atCarlow College and trained as acivil engineer atTrinity College.[2] Three of the Lalor brothers migrated to America and fought on both sides of theCivil War. However, Peter and his brother Richard decided to go to Australia, arriving inVictoria in October 1852. Lalor worked briefly on the construction of theGeelong to Melbourne railway, but resigned to take part in theVictorian Gold Rush.
He began mining in the Ovens diggings (Beechworth), then moved to theEureka Lead atBallarat where he befriendedDuncan Gillies, who later became Premier of Victoria. His brother Richard returned to Ireland, becoming politically active and a member of the House of Commons.[3]
Agitation against the requirement to buy a monthlylicence to mine for gold began with theRed Ribbon Movement atBendigo in 1853, and was quickly taken up at Ballarat. AReform League was formed amongst the diggers on the various goldfields for the redress of grievances. Provocatively, in October 1854, the Government ordered the police to go out hunting for unlicensed diggers two times a week.
In the later half of 1854, a digger namedJames Scobie was killed in a scuffle at the Eureka Hotel, on Specimen Hill. James Bentley, the hotel publican, was considered by the diggers to have participated in the murder. He and others were charged with murder and arrested, but were discharged after a trial that miners believed was corrupt.[4]
An indignation meeting was held at Ballarat on 17 October, close to the spot where Scobie had been killed. At the meeting, a committee was appointed, which included Peter Lalor, to raise money for the further prosecution of Bentley. The goldfield authorities, fearing that the meeting might lead to an attack on Bentley's hotel, sent police to guard it. A youth threw a stone at the lamp in front of the building, breaking the glass. That sparked cries of "Down with the house" and "Burn it", and the angry mob stormed the hotel and set it on fire. Three people were arrested and charged with acts of incendiarism, tried, and imprisoned.
A mass meeting was held onBakery Hill on 11 November 1854, to demand the release of the alleged incendiaries. It also passed resolutions affirming the right of the people to parliamentary representation, demandingmanhood suffrage, the abolition of property qualification for members of parliament, the payment of members, short parliaments (the gap between elections), and the abolition of theGold Commission and diggers' licenses. Bentley, in the meantime, had been re-arrested, on the advice of the Attorney-GeneralWilliam Stawell, for the murder of Scobie. He was convicted and sentenced to three years working on the roads.
On 29 November, a meeting of about 12,000 people was held at Ballarat. It is said to be the first public meeting that Lalor addressed, and he moved one of the resolutions which was passed. It called for a meeting of the Reform League for the following Sunday to elect a central committee. An "insurgent flag" was hoisted on the platform, which consisted of a representation of theSouthern Cross constellation on a dark blue background. Another resolution passed at the meeting declared the miner's license fee to be an unjustifiable imposition. A bonfire was soon kindled and many licences were burnt. At this meeting, the rebellion was formally inaugurated.[4]
We swear by theSouthern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties.
Lalor led the miners' opposition against the incompetent and often brutal administration of the goldfields authorities, and was elected to lead the men in the armed uprising after the meeting on Bakery Hill. The diggers erected a protective stockade, which was overrun by troops and police on the morning of 3 December. Lalor was seriously wounded in the left arm, resulting in its amputation. A warrant for his arrest on charges of sedition was issued, but he was taken from Ballarat by his supporters and hid in the Young Queen Hotel inSouth Geelong. The warrant was withdrawn in June 1855 after juries had found 13 other ringleaders not guilty of sedition.
As a result of the uprising, a number of the miners' complaints were resolved. Legislation was passed to give miners the right to vote. A new form of licensing was introduced: a miner's right, costing £1 per year. The monthly gold tax was abolished. A general amnesty for the three miners arrested after the Bentley's Eureka Hotel fire and the 114 arrested at the Eureka Stockade was proclaimed.
While the victors of Eureka were removing them alive from the stockade, Peter Lalor, the diggers' leader, lay under the pile of slabs in which he had been hidden, bleeding from the wound in his arm. A musket ball had shattered the bone close to the shoulder, and the few who knew where he was lying saw the blood trickling from beneath the pile of slabs even while the soldiers, keen to capture him, were still in the stockade. When the last of them had gone, Lalor was helped from his hiding place, put upon a white horse, and rode away through the bush towards Warrenheip. There he claimed shelter at the hut of a man he knew. The digger was absent, and his wife went to look for him. Lalor, however, doubted her genuineness, and believing that she had gone to communicate with the police, he took to the bush again for shelter. All that night he wandered about, with his crushed arm still swinging useless and unattended. He was greatly weakened from loss of blood, and only his indomitable pluck kept him up. Towards morning he determined to seek assistance from Stephen Cummins, an old friend whom he could trust, and who lived with his wife on Pennyweight Hill.
It was on the early morning of the Monday following the fight that Mrs. Cummins drew her husband's attention to a man walking slowly between the holes on the flat, and said, "That is Peter Lalor; I feel sure of it". "As I ran down to help him", Steve Cummins told a friend, "his face was grey and worried. He looked like a frail old man rather than a powerful young one, so greatly had pain and loss of blood during the 24 hours weakened him. I helped him into the hut, where as well as we could, my wife and I bandaged the wounded arm. I knew that my hut was no place for him. A reward of £200 had been offered for his arrest, and there were many mean spirits keen to earn it. Our friendship was well known, and I felt sure that sooner or later my place would be searched by the police. I ran at once across the gully to the Roman Catholic Presbytery and told Father Smyth that Lalor was in my tent badly wounded and in need of surgical assistance. I told him my fears as to the police visiting us, and Father Smyth said, 'He will be safer here, I think. Bring him over after dark.' So that night we took him across to the presbytery, meeting, fortunately, not a soul upon the road." Steve Cummins's intuition had served him well, for next night the police searched his hut, just at the time when he was watching Drs. Doyle and Stewart amputating Peter Lalor's arm, for the severity of the wound and the delay in treating it precluded any possibility of the arm being saved. Through the ordeal of amputation, as in every other emergency of life, he showed that fine courage which nothing could shake!
A man employed about the Presbytery took the severed arm away as soon as the operation was over, and threw it down an abandoned shaft, but by Father Smyth's orders it was recovered later and properly buried. The first operation was not complete. A portion of the bullet remained lodged in the stump of the arm, and it was only after a second operation at Geelong that the wound healed properly.[5]
Due to the political changes caused by theEureka Stockade, Lalor was elected to theVictorian Legislative Council in November 1855 as one of the two members for the newdistrict of Ballaarat,[6] and remained in that role until March 1856.[7][8] At thegeneral election in September and October 1856, under the new, more democratic constitution, which featured near-universal white male suffrage, Lalor was elected unopposed to theLegislative Assembly seat ofNorth Grenville (Ballarat West). Because he was the Eureka hero, his policies were not scrutinised at all before the election and his later voting record as a parliamentarian shows he opposed a bill to introduce full white male suffrage in thecolony of Victoria.[7][8]
During a speech in the Legislative Council in 1856 he said, "I would ask these gentlemen what they mean by the term 'democracy'. Do they mean Chartism or Communism or Republicanism? If so, I never was, I am not now, nor do I ever intend to be a democrat. But if a democrat means opposition to a tyrannical press, a tyrannical people, or a tyrannical government, then I have been, I am still, and will ever remain a democrat."[9]
HistorianWeston Bate wrote that the role of landowner and company director seemed to suit Lalor more than that of rebel, and that he "disgraced himself in democratic eyes" by trying to use Chinese as strike-breakers at the Clunes mine, of which he was a director. Some argue that he was ruthless in using low-paid Chinese workers to get rid of Australians seeking better and safer working conditions. In parliament, he supported a repressive land Bill in 1857 which favoured the rich, and there were 17,745 Ballarat signatures to a petition against Lalor's land Bill.[10]Withers and others were puzzled and hurt that the folk hero should prove to be a better fighter for money and political position than for the people's rights. Like many young radicals, he undoubtedly became more conservative in later life. However, he was consistent in being a risk-taker and, in his later business career, undoubtedly suffered lows as well as highs, at one point narrowly avoiding having to declare bankruptcy.[11] Lalor held North Grenville until it was abolished in 1859, and never represented Ballarat again. In theOctober 1859 election, he stood for and wonSouth Grant in the Legislative Assembly.[7]
Lalor held South Grant for over eleven years, until thegeneral election in 1871. At that election, he unsuccessfully contested the seat ofNorth Melbourne.[7] In the1874 general election, he was elected in South Grant once again. At the1877 election, he successfully contested the Legislative Assembly seat ofGrant, which he held for almost twelve years, until his death in February 1889.[7]
Lalor's key ministerial postings were asCommissioner of Trade and Customs andPostmaster-General of Victoria from August to October 1875, thenCommissioner of Trade and Customs from May 1877 until March 1880, as well as Postmaster-General again from May to July 1877. Lalor also served as chairman of committees in the period from 1859 to 1868.[7]
As the successor toSir Charles Gavan Duffy, his most effective political post was probably that ofSpeaker, a position he held from 1880 until 1887, when illness forced his retirement, after which he was awarded a pension of £4,000 by parliament.
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Lalor married Alicia Dunne on 10 July 1855 inGeelong. Their daughter, Anne (Annie), was born inPrahran in 1856, and their son, Joseph, was born at Sandridge (now calledPort Melbourne) on 18 December 1857. Annie Lalor married Thomas Lempriere in 1882, but died three years later of pulmonaryphthisis. Joseph Lalor became a medical doctor, marrying Agnes McCormick ofDublin, Ireland and leaving descendants.
Alicia Lalor died on 17 May 1887 at the age of 55 years. Following her death, Peter Lalor took leave from Parliament and visitedSan Francisco, California.
Lalor died on Saturday, 9 February 1889 at age 62, four days after his birthday, at his son's home in Richmond, and was buried at theMelbourne General Cemetery.[12]
A statue of Peter Lalor was erected at Sturt Street in Ballarat in 1893. It was presented to the municipality by a friend of Lalor's, James Oddie, who was also first chairman of the city, and was unveiled by another friend, the Premier, the HonDuncan Gillies.
The Melbourne suburb ofLalor, Victoria, was named after him in 1945. The suburb was originally pronounced "LAW-luh", after Peter Lalor, and although many people still pronounce it as such, in recent times the pronunciation "LAY-lor" has become predominant.
Peter Lalor Vocational College (formerly Peter Lalor Secondary College), in the Lalor area, is named in his honour.
A federal electorate in the south-western suburbs of Melbourne, theDivision of Lalor, was named after him in 1948. It has been held successively by senior Labor figuresReg Pollard,Jim Cairns,Barry Jones andJulia Gillard. The suburb of Lalor is not in the electorate, which is pronounced "LAW-luh".
Lalor Street inBallarat East was also named in his honour.
TheUniversity of Ballarat (now known asFederation University Australia) honoured Lalor by naming one of the twoHalls of Residence at the Mt Helen campus after him (the other being named afterBella Guerin, the first woman to graduate from an Australian university).
Portrayals of Lalor's role in the Eureka Rebellion appear in film.
The first film to have Lalor appear in is supposed to beEureka Stockade, but only a seven-minute fragment of it has survived. In 1915, Lalor was portrayed by Leslie Victor in the silent filmThe Loyal Rebel, which is also consideredlost.[13]Next, he was played byChips Rafferty in the 1949 British filmEureka Stockade (released in United States of America under the title,Massacre Hill).[14][15] He was played by Australian actorBryan Brown inEureka Stockade, a two-part television mini-series which aired on theSeven Network in 1984.[16] The most recent film in which Lalor is portrayed was the Australian documentaryRiot or Revolution: Eureka Stockade 1854 (2006), with Lalor played by Andrew Larkins.[17][18]
For further information about the various films depicting Peter Lalor, see:Eureka Rebellion in popular culture.
Since 1992, Lalor has been depicted in the commemorativeSon et lumière "Blood Under the Southern Cross" atSovereign Hill.[19]
A caricature bollard by artistJan Mitchell, depicting Peter Lalor holding the Eureka flag, was erected on the Geelong foreshore in 1999 as part of theWaterfront Geelong bollard walk.
His portrait is featured on two commemorative postage stamps, a 38c Irish stamp released on 3 May 2001 in the "Rebel Spirit, Irish Heritage of Australia" series, and a 2004AUD2.45 Australian stamp commemorating the Eureka Stockade.[20]
Additional sources listed by theAustralian Dictionary of Biography:
| Victorian Legislative Council | ||
|---|---|---|
| New district | Member forBallaarat 1855–1856 Served alongside:John Basson Humffray | Original Council abolished |
| Victorian Legislative Assembly | ||
| New district | Member forNorth Grenville 1856–1859 | District abolished |
| Preceded by | Member forSouth Grant 1859–1871 Served alongside:James Gattie Carr 1859–1861 Michael James Cummins 1861–1864 John Rout Hopkins 1864–1867 George Cunningham 1868–1871 John Myles 1859–1861 William Nelson McCann 1861–1867 William Stutt 1867–1871 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Member forSouth Grant 1874–1877 Served alongside:John Rout Hopkins Jonas Levien | District abolished |
| New district | Member forGrant 1877–1889 Served alongside:John Rees | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Speaker of the Victorian Legislative Assembly 1880–1887 | Succeeded by |
