Robert Cribb

Story

Robert Cribb was born in Poole, Dorset on 7 January 1805, son of Independent parents Mary (nee Dirham) and John Galpin Cribb, merchant mariner. When Robert was ten he was shipwrecked with his father and his crew. They were rescued, but all except young Robert were taken by the press gang to serve on British warships in the Napoleonic wars.

Once he had completed his apprenticeship as a baker Robert went to London to seek his fortune, but he remembered the hardships his mother had suffered bringing up five children on her own. Robert married Sarah Sansom from Dorset and they soon owned a bakery and confectionery in Bedford Street, Covent Garden. He joined the movement for reform and radicalism which demanded ‘a complete overhaul of the parliamentary system\’ and registered to vote. When Dr John Dunmore Lang advertised for emigrants to ‘build a better England\’ on the other side of the world, Robert saw the opportunity for a brighter future in Moreton Bay and paid £100 for a land order.

Robert and Sarah\’s party on the Fortitude was: their four children, John George, Mary Elizabeth, Robert junior and William; their female servant Sarah Walton; a nephew George Holt; two nieces Delilah and Emma Sansom; and a friend Eleanor Atkins. After 142 days at sea they disembarked onto Moreton Island on 28 January 1849 where they were quarantined because of typhus and to give the police magistrate, Captain Wickham, time to prepare accommodation for them. The Cribbs camped in York\’s Hollow (now named Fortitude Valley) and Robert immediately bought the only bakery business in Brisbane Town.

Robert\’s older sister Mary Dirham arrived in May on the second of Lang\’s ships, the Chaseley, with their younger brother Benjamin Cribb and his family, and soon all the Cribbs were active in politics, business, education and religion.

Robert had always been the leader in the family: first to become a church member; first to go to London; first to own a business; first to register to vote; first to come to Moreton Bay and first to buy land in New South Wales. Owning land worth £200 qualified him to vote, and owning land in different electorates gave him more votes, so Robert bought crown and private land, sold the bakery and became a land agent and auctioneer. In 1852 he built his first home just outside the town boundary at Milton, where the streets still bear his name, and in the same year established Lang Farm further upriver and ‘put a man on it\’ to see what he could grow.

He worked tirelessly for separation from New South Wales and when it was achieved on 6 June 1859, Robert was acknowledged as ‘having been, next to Dr. Lang, the most active in bringing about this result\’. He represented East Moreton in the last New South Wales parliament before separation and served in the first and second Queensland parliaments. He was elected to the Brisbane Municipal Council in October 1859 and sworn in to serve on the bench in December 1859; so when he was elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1860 as a member for Brisbane, he held three unpaid public offices.

When the financial crisis of the 1860s struck, Benjamin, who founded Cribb and Foote in Ipswich, had family and employees to run the store while he attended to his public duties, but Robert did not, and in his enthusiasm for public life he neglected his business and it slid into bankruptcy. Benjamin kindly took over his brother\’s debts at a difficult time which resulted in nearly all Robert\’s extensive land holdings being transferred to Benjamin.

‘Honest Bob Cribb\’ was often quoted in the press for his colourful and controversial speeches. He believed in manhood suffrage, the natural law of supply and demand, an eight hour day, free trade, superannuation and annual parliaments and fought for separation of church and state, non-sectarian education, the Real Property Act and altering the law of primogeniture. He was against indirect taxes, monopolies, forced labour, privileges for a particular class and allowing lawyers to charge high fees for simple negotiations.

Until his death aged eighty-eight Robert Cribb\’s ‘mind was clear and his interest in affairs was keen up to the close\’. He was an individualist and called himself a Liberal when it meant reformist. Contemporaries said he was restless, pugnacious, obstructionist, honest, indefatigable and irrepressible. Nobody ever said he was dull and he ‘became something of a legend before his death in 1893\’.

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