People Australia

Portrait of William Alexander Mackinnon, published by W. Fletcher, London, c. 1847-48

The Health of Towns Magazine and Journal of Medical Jurisprudence, Wellcome Collection

William Alexander Mackinnon (1784–1870), British politician and colonial commissioner, was born in Dauphiné, France, to William Mackinnon and Harriet (née Frye), both of Antigua.[1] His mother was the daughter of Francis Frye (–1774), a well-to-do planter of Antigua, and had been left £2,000 on her father’s death.[2] His father (William Mackinnon, 1760–1794), grandfather (William Mackinnon, 1732–1809), great-grandfather (William Mackinnon, –1767) and great-great-grandfather (Daniel Mackinnon, –1720) had all owned estates, and enslaved people, in Antigua.[3] In 1834 Mackinnon and his aunt Catherine (née Call) received £2,307 13s 7d as their share of the compensation for the 279 enslaved people on the Mackinnon Estate in Antigua.[4] His father, who had held the estate, had died at sea while returning from Antigua some forty years earlier.[5] Mackinnon was educated at the University of Cambridge (BA, 1804; MA, 1807) and was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, although he was never called to the Bar.[6] On the death of his grandfather in 1809, he became the 33rd chief of the Clan of Mackinnon. [7]

In 1812 Mackinnon married Emma Mary Palmer (–1835), the daughter of Elizabeth and Joseph Budworth Palmer of Palmerstown, County Mayo, at St James, Piccadilly.[8] The couple had six children: William Alexander (1813–1903), Lachlan Bellingham (1815–1877), Emma Mary (1818–1891), Flora Elizabeth (1821–1898), Daniel Roger Lionel (1824–1854), and Louisa Harriet (1826–1902).[9] Emma Palmer was said, at the time of her marriage, to be a great heiress, and on her death her probate was valued at £18,000.[10] In 1842 Mackinnon commenced legal proceedings against the Palmer family for a sum of £5,674, which he claimed was owed to him as a personal representative of his late wife under the will of Sir William Henry Palmer.[11] Mackinnon had estates at Acryse Park and Belvedere House in Kent, and a property in London at 4 Hyde Park Place.[12]

Mackinnon entered parliament in 1819.[13] However, in 1820 he was left without a seat and did not return to Parliament until 1831, during which time he wrote On the Rise, Progress and Present State of Public Opinion in Great Britain and Other Parts of the World (1828). The book was largely Tory in its outlook and in 1831 he was returned unopposed for the borough of Lymington. In that year he voted against the Reform Bill which aimed to simplify the English borough franchise system by enfranchising all resident ratepayers of property with a yearly rental of at least £10 and abolishing all other franchises. Mackinnon lost his seat in 1832 but was returned in 1835 and retained it until 1852.[14]When his son William Alexander Mackinnon junior lost his seat in Rye in 1853 due to alleged ‘treating’ (bribery), Mackinnon senior successfully contested the by-election and remained there until his retirement in 1865.[15]

Concerned with animal cruelty, Mackinnon created, in conjunction with Joseph Pearse MP, the Cruelty to Animals Act, which passed in 1835, and became Chair of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1842.[16]He was chairman of the UK Insurance Office in 1842; a fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Geographical Society, the Asiatic Society, and the Society of Antiquaries; and a captain in the South Hampshire yeomanry cavalry (1821–25) and the Lymington yeoman cavalry (1834).[17]

In September 1834 Mackinnon’s name appeared as one of the directors in the prospectus of a new bank. It was to be called the Royal Bank of Australasia and South Africa and to have branches in the colonies of Australia, Van Diemen’s Land, and the Cape of Good Hope.[18] The following year he was appointed one of twelve colonization commissioners for South Australia under the terms of the South Australia Colonization Act 1834.[19] The purpose of the South Australian Colonization Commission was to provide for the development of lands and colonial government of South Australia. It embodied many of the ideas of systematic colonisation propounded by Edward Gibbon Wakefield. The Act was the initiative of the South Australian Association. Mackinnon was a signatory of the Third annual report of the Colonization Commissioners but was not a signatory to the other three reports.[20] The commissioners were dismissed in 1839 by Lord John Russell, and three salaried officers were put in their place. Mackinnon protested this move, complaining later that it had bankrupted the colony.[21]

There is no record of Mackinnon ever visiting South Australia. He died in 1870 at Belvedere, Broadstairs, Kent, leaving effects of nearly £100,000.[22]Mackinnon Parade in Adelaide bears his name.[23] He was an extremely wealthy man, deriving much of his wealth from the generations of family members whose plantations were worked by the labour of enslaved people. It was this privileged lifestyle that enabled Mackinnon to become one of the commissioners for South Australia, which resulted in the sale of 50,000 acres of South Australian land between 1835 and 1839 and enabled the formation of the colony.[24]

[1] ‘A Cambridge Alumni Database,’ University of Cambridge, accessed 20 November 2024, https://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search-2018.pl?sur=&suro=w&fir=&firo=c&cit=&cito=c&c=all&z=all&tex=MKNN799WA&sye=&eye=&col=all&maxcount=50; Multiple News Items, Morning Post (London), 2 May 1870, 5.

[2]  Will of The Honorable Francis Frye of Island of Antigua, 17 June 1774, PROB 11/998/306, The National Archives (TNA), Kew, London; Vere Langford Oliver, History of the Island of Antigua vol. 1 (London: Mitchell and Hughes, 1894), 281.

[3] Vere Langford Oliver, History of the Island of Antigua vol. 2 (London: Mitchell and Hughes, 1896), 220-224.

[4] ‘Catherine Mackinnon (née Call),’ Legacies of British Slavery, accessed 20 November 2024, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146631202.

[5] Oliver, History of the Island of Antigua vol. 2, 228.

[6] ‘A Cambridge Alumni Database.’

[7] ‘Mackinnon, William Alexander (1784-1870),’ The History of Parliament, https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/mackinnon-william-alexander-1784-1870.

[8] St James Westminster Parish register, DL/T/090/005, London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Ancestry; ‘Emma Palmer,’ The Peerage, accessed 20 November 2024, https://thepeerage.com/p50513.htm#c505124.1; William E.A. Axon, ed., Annal of Manchester: A Chronological record from the earliest times to the end of 1885 (London: John Haywood, 1886), 148.

[9] St Marylebone Westminster, parish registers, P89/Mry1/014, LMA, Ancestry.

[10] Mackinnon, Emma Mary, National Probate Calendar, 5 June 1871, Principal Probate Registry London, Ancestry.

[11] Mackinnon v Palmer and Others, (1844) Executors of Dame A. Palmer, vlex Ireland, accessed 20 November 2024, https://ie.vlex.com/vid/mackinnon-v-palmer-and-805246913.

[12] William Alexander Mackinnon, National Probate Calendar, Principal Probate Registry, London, Ancestry; East Kent Poll Book 1868, 139, The London Archives and Guildhall Library, Ancestry.

[13] ‘Mackinnon, William Alexander (1784-1870).’

[14] ‘The English Reform Legislation,’ The History of Parliament, http://www.histparl.ac.uk/volume/1820-1832/survey/ix-english-reform-legislation.

[15] ‘Rye,’ Morning Post (London), 8 March 1853, 4; ‘Multiple News Items,’ Morning Post (London), 25 May 1853, 3.

[16] ‘Mackinnon, William Alexander (1784-1870)’; Diana Donald, Women against Cruelty : Protection of Animals in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), 80.

[17] H. C. G. Matthew, ‘Mackinnon, William Alexander, of Mackinnon (1784–1870),’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2204, revised 2021, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/17619; ‘Mackinnon, William Alexander (1784-1870).’

[18] ‘Prospectus of “The Royal Bank of Australasia and South Africa,”’ Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 13 September 1834, 356.

[19] ‘Latest English News,’ Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 21 November 1835, 604; ‘Management and sale of Land,’ South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register (Adelaide), 18 June 1836, 4.

[20] ‘William Alexander Mackinnon,’ Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, accessed 11 November 2024, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/imperial/view/105794652.

[21] ‘New Zealand,’ UK Parliament, 7 July 1840, accessed 20 November 2024, https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1840-07-07/debates/9a437ef6-b876-4edf-8959-22e2e35803e1/NewZealand?highlight=%22south%20australia%22#contribution-b4be160e-9b13-434d-93c5-9c76e2ab9ea7; ‘South Australia,’ UK Parliament, 15 March 1841, accessed 20 November 2024,   https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1841-03-15/debates/fdd76cf1-a994-4cb7-a5ff-39ded97ba2fa/SouthAustralia .

[22] William Alexander Mackinnon, National Probate Calendar, Principal Probate Registry, London, Ancestry.

[23] ‘Delving Into Derivations,’ Mail (Adelaide), 7 August 1926, 17.

[24] ‘South Australia,’ UK Parliament, 15 March 1841, accessed 20 November 2024, https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1841-03-15/debates/fdd76cf1-a994-4cb7-a5ff-39ded97ba2fa/SouthAustralia.