George Gillott

Story

George Clement Gillott and Samuel Gillott were sons of a Yorkshire corn miller who died in 1851 when they were in their teens.

In August 1853 George disembarked in Melbourne from the sailing ship Carntyne and found employment as an articled clerk with an attorney, one Mr S. B.Vaughan. It is not known exactly why he undertook such a journey alone at the age of seventeen. It may have been to get away from his mother Eliza, who was becoming mentally unstable. She later became quite deranged. Eliza’s brother George Whitehead practised as a physician in Melbourne around that time, and a career in medicine may have been seen as George\’s future.

George\’s younger brother Sam arrived unexpectedly in Melbourne in January 1856, then also aged seventeen. By then George had become well established and was able to secure a position for Sam as an articled clerk with his master, Mr. Vaughan.

Eliza visited her sons in Melbourne in 1857, arriving on the sailing ship General Windham in September of that year. She also paid them a second visit some time later.

George was a young man sowing his wild oats. A bright lawyer, he was also a keen sportsman and a wanderer. Preferring life in the country, he moved up to the Murray River and settled in Deniliquin in the 1860’s. In 1867 he married Annie Mary Betteley Jefferson and they raised a family of six children, who have many surviving descendants in Australia. George practised as a lawyer in the Riverina for over thirty years, specialising in police court work. The Deniliquin Pastoral Times of the period contains many reports of cases where Mr. Gillott appeared for the defence and obtained acquittal of some poor unfortunate soul. He died in Deniliquin in June 1895. Annie May\’s brother Henry Betteley Jefferson worked for George in his legal practice. Henry later joined the NSW Post and Telegraph Service and was the Telegraph Master at Jerilderie in February 1879, when the town was bailed up by Ned Kelly\’s notorious gang. Annie May died in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, in 1919.

Sam had a career in law and politics. As Mayor of Melbourne in 1901 he was host to HRH the Duke of Cornwall and York on the occasion of his visit to Melbourne for the opening of the first Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. He was knighted personally by the future king and elevated to the status of Lord Mayor. However, his association with the more colourful side of Melbourne life at the turn of the century lead to his political downfall in 1906, when he was Chief Secretary of Victoria during the premiership of Thomas Bent. Sam married Elizabeth Jane Hawken, the daughter of a Melbourne building contractor, in 1862, but had no children. Their family home was Edensor, 11 Brunswick Street, Fitzrory, the birthplace of the Blessed Mary MacKillop. He died in June 1913 whilst on a visit to his native town of Sheffield and his body was returned to Melbourne for burial. He was later immortalised as Chief Secretary ‘Sir Samuel Gibbon’ in Frank Hardy\’s novel Power Without Glory. Lady Elizabeth Gillott died in Melbourne in 1922.

In 1881 they were joined by their cousin Joe, son of their uncle Richard. Joe had a private music teaching practice in Melbourne and composed many Australian popular, patriotic and federation songs. In 1900 he returned to England, where he provided the musical accompaniment to his song Australia’s Cherished Dream at the farewell banquet held for the Earl of Hopetoun on his departure to take up his post as first Governor-general of the Commonwealth of Australia. Joe died in Sheffield in 1939.

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