History

In November 1860, John Wilson Wright, Chairman of the Maldon Municipal Council, called a meeting at the Royal Hotel to consider setting up a mechanics’ institute. Fifteen men were elected that night to an establishment committee: Misters Courtin (Chairperson), Hannay (Secretary), Warnock, Hornsby, Smith, Tate, Hornblower, Hall, Goldsmid, Barclay, Ramsay, Kydd, Rivington, Manuel and Braddon.

Among them were mining directors, local traders, a wheelwright and a builder; some sat on other committees; many held positions of responsibility within various churches and benevolent societies. These were leading men of the town; the founding fathers of Maldon itself.  

Perhaps because they were so busy, or perhaps because it proved more difficult than anticipated to secure either a building or funding, by 1861 the endeavor had stalled. In February 1861, an editorial in the Tarrangower Times (owned by Council Chairman John Wilson Wright) laid the blame on the men on the committee who had only ‘lent their names to the cause’ so that ‘the whole of the work [was] thrown on the shoulders of five or six men’. Over the next few years, the Tarrangower Times steadfastly kept the issue of a mechanics institute in the public eye, publishing admonishments, suggestions and lamentations.

The newspaper’s perseverance, together with the efforts of a dedicated few, finally paid off when, in February 1863, the Tarrangower Times was able to announce the opening of a temporary reading room. In March 1863, it reported that a meeting held in the reading room had adopted the name ‘Athenaeum’ and formed a committee. Those elected were Misters Courtin (President), Ellis (Vice President), Phillips (Secretary), Hornsby, Smith, Tate, Lyon, McKowen and Brisco. Mr John Ramsay, MLA, was unanimously elected as an Honorary Member. Jonathan Moon joined soon after.

Several of the men mentioned deserve more attention, in particular:

• John Wilson Wright became the inaugural Chairman of the Maldon Municipal Council when it was established in 1858 (despite the town boundaries not having yet been determined). Council soon dispatched a delegation (including Wright) to Melbourne to raise urgent issues with Government – the deplorable state of the roads, lack of water, inadequate police force, no hospital and no mechanics’ institute. Five months before being elected to Council, Wright had established Maldon’s first newspaper, the Tarrangower Times. He assured Council there was no conflict of interest as he had ‘no more connection with the editorial or literary department of the paper than any gentleman now present’ (although historian Brian Rhule claims that Wright wrote under another name).
• James Warnock was also elected to the first Maldon Municipal Council and accompanied Wright to Melbourne to plead the case for land and financial assistance for a mechanics’ institute. He was an active member of the establishment committee and Vice President of the Athenaeum’s committee from 1872-1874. Proprietor of the Bee Hive Store in High St, he was a staunch Wesleyan and active in the public life of the town, including serving as a Justice of the Peace.
• Thomas Hannay arrived from Scotland in 1854, then travelled around Victoria taking photographs, many of which are now held in the State Library Victoria. In 1860, he established a business in Main St, Maldon selling books, stationery and newspapers. He was on the board of the cemetery and an active member of the committee to establish the Athenaeum. Once established, he supplied the Athenaeum reading room with newspapers and periodicals ‘at Melbourne prices’.
• Frederick Courtin, the first President of the Athenaeum, was also a mining investor and company director. He held many public offices including Chairman of the Municipal Council (1859–1860); Justice of the Peace; President of the German Club; and Chairman of the Maldon Hospital (1867–1871). He stood for parliament in 1871, but was unsuccessful and sailed for London soon after.
• John Hornsby, a builder, was the mainstay of the Maldon Athenaeum for almost forty years, beginning at the meeting held in 1860 and including thirty-four years on the Athenaeum committee. The temporary reading room was located at his High St business premises. With Arthur Ellis (Athenaeum Vice President and manager of the Post and Telegraph Office), he took part in the Athenaeum’s first public discussion entitled ‘Are the great powers of Europe justified in preserving neutrality in the present American difficulty?’ He negotiated with Government to secure the reservation of Crown Land for the Athenaeum, and did the renovations when the institute moved into its permanent home in the old Post and Telegraph Office. His company (Hornsby and Brisco) built many landmark building around Maldon including the hospital and the Anglican church.
• Jonathan Moon, unlike steadfast Hornsby, remained on the first committee for only 8 months, during which he was honorary librarian and became secretary when Phillips died shortly after being elected to the role. A failed English entrepreneur with a flair for acting and entertaining, he exhibited aerial views sketched while flying in hot air balloons over London, Paris and other cities. His enduring achievement was the writing of a short history of the first 10 years of the town, now held in the State Library. In it he wrote that the Maldon Athenaeum ‘has been established but a short time, but is progressing with every prospect of future success’.

The motivations of these men were probably mixed, as motivations tend to be, and possibly included ambition, financial gain, moral duty and social expectations. Although mechanics’ institutes originated as places of learning and self-improvement for working men, in the fledgling towns of the Victorian goldfields they provided a broader focal point for the emerging community, contributing greatly to its social infrastructure. In June 1860, the Tarrangower Times advocated for a mechanics’ institute in Maldon where:

… working men and others … could meet, form classes for mutual instruction, read the current literature of the period, hear lectures, and otherwise benefit themselves at but a modicum of the cost now entailed on them, when they are dependent on a circulating library for books or the parlour of public houses for a perusal of newspapers, and the chance of a casual philanthropist paying the town a visit for the purpose of lecturing.

While the Maldon Athenaeum’s founding fathers may have had the advancement of the working man in mind, undoubtedly they were also motivated by the prospect of their own participation in the social, cultural and intellectual life such an institution would bring to the town.  

Lynda Achren 2026

References

Library minutes held in the Maldon Athenaeum Archive Collection. For use within the library only.

Moon, Jonathan George (1864). Tarrangower, past and present: a history of Maldon from 1853. Guide, business directory, and calendar. Reminiscences of the good old times. Howliston, Tate, Maldon. Available on www.slv.vic.gov.au (State Library Victoria).

National Library of Australia Digitised Newspapers − trove.nla.gov.au

Mount Alexander Mail, 1 September1858.
Mount Alexander Mail, 10 September1858.
Mount Alexander Mail, 8 October 1858.
The Tarrangower Times and Maldon District Advertiser, 12 October, 1858.
The Tarrangower Times and Maldon District Advertiser, 15 June 1860.
The Tarrangower Times and Maldon District Advertiser, 16 November 1860.
The Tarrangower Times and Maldon District Advertiser, 19 February 1861.
The Tarrangower Times and Maldon and Newstead Advertiser, 24 October 1862.
The Tarrangower Times and Maldon and Newstead Advertiser, 16 December 1862.
The Tarrangower Times and Maldon and Newstead Advertiser, 13 January 1863.
The Tarrangower Times and Maldon and Newstead Advertiser, 17 February 1863.
The Tarrangower Times and Maldon and Newstead Advertiser, 16 March 1863.
The Tarrangower Times and Maldon and Newstead Advertiser, 17 April 1863.

Reid, Derek (2022) A history of the Tarrangower Times newspaper. Maldon Museum and Archives Association, Maldon. Available on http://maldonmuseum.com.au 

Rhule, Brian (2019) Maldon: A new history 1853−1928. Exploring History Australia, Bendigo, Victoria.

Say, Madeleine (2020) Thomas Hannay, photographer in 19th-century western Victoria. ‘The La Trobe Journal No. 104 March 2020’. Available on www.slv.vic.gov.au (State Library Victoria).