On this day, 13th August 1790, William Charles Wentworth, was born.
W C Wentworth was an Australian explorer, journalist and politician, and one of the leading figures of early colonial New South Wales. He was born on Norfolk Island to a convict mother but his father was D’Arcy Wentworth, the assistant surgeon in the colony of New South Wales.
In 1813, Wentworth, along with Gregory Blaxland and William Lawson, led the expedition which found a route across the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and opened up the grazing lands of inland New South Wales. The State Library of New South Wales holds Wentworth’s journal of the journey of exploration.
William’s father D'Arcy Wentworth died in 1827 and William inherited his property, becoming one of the wealthiest men in the colony. He bought land in eastern Sydney and built the mansion, Vaucluse House. However, because his parents had never married, and his mother had been a convict, and was the daughter of two convicts, he could not become a member of Sydney’s “respectable” class, known as “the exclusives.” Embittered by this rejection, he placed himself at the head of the “emancipist” party, which sought equal rights and status for ex-convicts and their descendants.
A gifted orator and a vitriolic journalist, Wentworth became the colony’s leading political figure of the 1820s and 1830s, calling for representative government, the abolition of transportation, freedom of the press and trial by jury.
Wentworth founded a newspaper, The Australian, the colony’s first privately owned paper, to champion his causes. In 1853 Wentworth chaired the committee to draft a new constitution for New South Wales, which was to receive full responsible self-government from Britain. Wentworth was later instrumental in founding the University of Sydney, seen as an important step in the development of the colony of New South Wales.
He died in England in 1872, but his body was returned to Australia and a large state funeral was held in Sydney, the first state funeral in New South Wales.
