Sir William John Clarke, 1st Baronet (31 March 1831 â 15 May 1897), was an Australian businessman and philanthropist in the Colony of Victoria. He was raised to the baronetage in 1882, the first Victorian to be granted a hereditary honour.
Clarke was born in Van Diemen's Land, the son of the pastoralist William John Turner Clarke. He arrived in the Port Phillip District (the future Victoria) in 1850, where he managed many of his father's properties and acquired some of his own. Upon his father's death in 1874, he became the largest landowner in the colony. Clarke was made a baronet for his work as the head of the Melbourne International Exhibition, which brought Australia to international attention. He also served terms as president of the Australian Club, president of the Victorian Football Association, and president of the Melbourne Cricket Club, and was prominent in yachting and horse racing circles. Clarke gave generously to charitable organisations, and also made significant financial contributions to the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne and the University of Melbourne. He was a member of the Victorian Legislative Council from 1878 until 1897, although he was not particularly active in politics.
Clarke was born at Lovely Banks (one of his father's properties, near Jericho) in Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania), the eldest of three sons of William John Turner Clarke and his wife Eliza (née Dowling).
Clarke first arrived in Victoria in 1850, when he spent a couple of years in the study of sheep farming on his father's Dowling Forest station, and afterwards in the management of the Woodlands station on the Wimmera. For the next ten years he resided in Tasmania, working the Norton-Mandeville estate in conjunction with his brother, Joseph Clarke.
In 1862 Clarke stood against George Higinbotham in the Brighton by-election for the Victorian Legislative Assembly, but was not elected. In 1878, he successfully ran for Victorian Legislative Council for the Southern Province.
In 1862 Clarke assumed the management of his father's concerns in Victoria. His father died 1874, and Clarke inherited the bulk of the family's estates on the Australian mainland; his inheritance from his father exceeded ã1,500,000 and rendered the younger Clarke as the largest landowner in the Colony of Victoria.
In the same year he was appointed president of the commissioners of the Melbourne international exhibition which was opened on 1 October 1880. In 1882 he gave ã3,000 to found a scholarship in the Royal College of Music. Amongst Sir William Clarke's other public donations are the gift of ã2000 to the Indian Famine Relief Fund, of ã10,000 towards building the Anglican Cathedral at Melbourne, and of ã7,000 to Trinity College, Melbourne University.
He was the inaugural president of the Victorian Football Association, presiding from 1877 until 1882.
Clarke was a very prominent Victorian Freemason and was elected provincial grand master of the Irish Constitution in 1881 and then district grand master of both the Scottish and English Constitutions in 1884. In 1889 he became the very first Most Worshipful Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of Victoria, an amalgamation of the three bodies that had operated at that time under their own constitutions. In 1885 he had largely financed the building of the Freemasons' Hall at 25 Collins Street.
Clarke was married twice; he first married Mary Walker, daughter of Victorian Politician The Hon. John Walker, on 23 November 1860. The marriage produced four children:
Mary Clarke died in 1871; Clarke remarried on 21 January 1873 to Janet Marian Snodgrass. Janet was the daughter of Victorian pastoralist and politician The Hon. Peter Snodgrass; prior to the marriage, Janet Snodgrass had been employed by Clarke as a Governess for his elder children in the late 1860s. By his second wife, Clarke fathered a further eight children:
In 1876, Clarke and his family moved into Rupertswood, a large country mansion he had built near Sunbury. His city residence was Cliveden, an equally massive mansion in East Melbourne that was completed in 1888 at a cost of ã91,000.
Clarke was created a baronet in 1882, by Queen Victoria in recognition for his many donations and for his presiding over the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880.
During the later decades of the nineteenth century, Sir William and his second wife Janet, Lady Clarke were prominent in Melbourne's high society, and were known for their lavish hospitality, hosting frequent balls, luncheons, dinners, and garden parties. Many singers and musicians got their starts by being asked to perform at these events. During the depression of the early 1890s, Lady Clarke also ran a soup kitchen out of Cliveden.
Clarke died at Melbourne on 15 May 1897. His son Rupert succeeded him as the 2nd Baronet. The baronetcy of Clarke of Rupertswood is one of only two active hereditary titles in an Australian family.
The valuation of Sir William's estate for probate included ã418,896 in the Colony of Victoria, and ã171,083 outside of the Colony. The total value of his estate was estimated to be well in excess of ã1,000,000.
Clarke was a household name in Victoria.