People Australia

Lieutenant Colonel George Palmer c.1870

State Library of South Australia, [B 45361]

George Palmer (c.1799—1883), merchant and South Australian colonization commissioner, was born at Claines, Worcestershire, in 1799 to George Palmer senior (1772–1853) and his wife Anna Maria Bund (c.1769–1856).[1] Along with his two brothers and two sisters he grew up at the family seat of Nazeing Park in Essex; he was educated at Harrow.[2] His father had served in the East India Company navy and later became an East India merchant and shipowner with Palmer, MacKillop and Company. George junior joined the firm, but both father and son left in 1842.[3]

Palmer’s father and grandfather, William Palmer, owned enslaved people and sugar estates in Grenada.[4] In 1835 George Palmer senior, along with his three brothers, was awarded a share of £2,992 19s 9d compensation for the Springs and Mount Aire Estates and 109 enslaved people as mortgagees-in-possession.[5] He also claimed a share of the £3,495 5s 2d compensation for the Upper Latante Estate in Grenada, along with 129 enslaved people, as he and his brother, John Horseley Palmer, and business partner, Lestock Peach Wilson, were mortgagees.[6] On his father’s death in 1853 Palmer was left one half of his personal estate, which included these funds.[7] He married Elizabeth Charlotte Surtees (c.1805-1848) in the parish of St George Hanover Square on 21 June 1827.[8] Together they had six children: George Henry (1828–1902), Charlotte Maria (1831–1916), Archdale Villiers (1832–1908), Ralph Charlton (1839–1923), William Cotteral Surtees (1841-1842), and girl who died in infancy (1848-1848).[9]

Palmer was made one of the colonization commissioners for South Australia in 1835 and, along with fellow commissioner Raikes Currie, was a committee member for the South Australian Church Association, formed to assist colonists to South Australia by providing an Anglican church, a residence for a clergyman, and a school.[10] In 1840 the South Australian colonization commissioners, whose services had been voluntary, were replaced by three salaried commissioners.[11] This was a source of discontent for some, including Palmer, who wrote that they had been ‘dismissed by Lord John Russell like drunken menials, without a moment's notice, on the 23d Dec. last, and without granting the interview we requested.’[12]

In 1836 Palmer and fellow colonization commissioner, Jacob Montefiore, were given the task of purchasing and fitting out the brigs Rapid and Cygnet, which carried Colonel Light and two shiploads of emigrants to South Australia that year.[13] The two men instigated safety reforms, including the mandatory carriage of a ship’s surgeon on vessels with over one hundred passengers and the raising of deck heights. These reforms, which were said to have saved many lives, were then applied to all British emigrant ships.[14]

In 1858 George Palmer sent a Georgian silver punch bowl and ladle to the mayor and corporation of the City of Adelaide on behalf of himself and three other colonization commissioners: Jacob Montefiore, Raikes Currie, and Alexander Elder. With it he also sent a piece of the Princess Royal of England’s wedding cake. The bowl was inscribed ‘Presented to the Mayor and Corporation of Adelaide, that they may thereout drink in Australian wine to the memory of Lieut.-Col. Light.’[15] The yearly ceremony, dubbed ‘The Colonel Light Ceremony,’ in which councillors eat fruitcake and drink a toast to Colonel Light with wine from the silver bowl, continues today. [16]

Palmer was also a director of the Asylum Life Office.[17] He had raised the Essex Yeomanry, a volunteer cavalry unit, in 1830, and between 1838 and 1843 he commanded and maintained it at his own expense. He was a verderer of Waltham Forest and a justice of the peace in Essex.[18] Although he never visited Australia, Palmer Place and Palmer Gardens in Adelaide—now also known as Panki-Panki, after a local Kaurna guide—were named for him, as was the town of Palmer in the mid-Murray region of South Australia.[19]

Palmer died on 26 April 1883 at Nazeing, leaving a personal estate of £3,937 1s 7d.[20] He is remembered in Nazeing Church as ‘one of the nine original commissioners who in 1837 founded the British colony of South Australia.’[21] Palmer’s position as one of the colonization commissioners of South Australia enabled him to re-invest profits derived from slave-worked plantations in Grenada into the formation of this British colony.

[1] 1851 census, HO107, 1770, f. 338, 19, The National Archives, United Kingdom, via Ancestry; Claines Register Book, 1799, Worcestershire Archive & Archaeology Service, Ancestry; Freda Harcourt, ‘Palmer, George, (1772–1853),’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2021.

[2] W. R. Powell (ed.), ‘Nazeing,’ A History of the County of Essex, vol. 5 (London: Victoria County History, 1966), British History Online, accessed 17 December 2024, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/essex/vol5/pp140-150; M.G. Dauglish and P.K. Stephenson (eds), The Harrow School Register (New York: Longman’s Green and Co, 1911), 58.

[3] ‘Palmer, McKillop, Dent & Co.,’ Legacies of British Slavery, accessed 12 February 2025, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/firm/view/669074152.

[4] Harcourt, ‘Palmer, George, (1772–1853)’.

[5] Mortgagee-in-possession: ‘A creditor who had foreclosed on a mortgage to take possession of an estate and take its income but whose tenure was subject to the right to redeem the mortgage (the “equity of redemption”) held by the original owner.’ See: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/project/individuals

[6] ‘George Palmer,’ Legacies of British Slavery, accessed 12 February 2025, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/10809.

[7] Will of George Palmer, 1853, PROB-11-2174-301, TNA.

[8] Bishop’s transcripts, 21 June 1827, DL/T/089/022, London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), via Ancestry; Bishop’s transcript, 1827, London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), via Ancestry.

[9] George Palmer, baptism, 14 November 1828, St Marylebone Westminster parish register, P89/Mry1/029, LMA, via Ancestry; George Palmer, FreeBDM, Civil registration death index, via Ancestry; Charlotte M. Hamilton, civil registration death index, vol. 1a, 565, General Register Office, via Ancestry; 1841 census, Nazeing, Essex, HO107, 341, f. 8, 9, TNA via Ancestry; All Saints Nazeing, Essex Churches, accessed 19 February 2025, Essex Archives Online, via Ancestry; Ralph Charlton Palmer, Nazeing burial register, D/P 321/1/22, Essex Archives Online, via Ancestry.

[10] ‘The Courier,’ Hobart Town Courier, 23 October 1835, 2; ‘Advertising,’ South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register (Adelaide), 18 June 1836, 1.

[11] ‘Colonial Land and Emigration Board,’ South Australian Colonist and Settlers' Weekly Record of British, Foreign and Colonial Intelligence (London), 5 May 1840, 129.

[12] ‘Lord Eliot’s Motion for Parliamentary Papers on South Australia,’ South Australian Colonist and Settlers' Weekly Record of British, Foreign and Colonial Intelligence (London), 31 March 1840, 56.

[13] ‘The Duke of Wellington, South Australia, and Colonel Light,’ Adelaide Times, 15 August 1853, 2.

[14] ‘From Australia’s Jewish Past: Jacob Barrow Montefiore – Improving ship travel to the colonies,’ J-wire, accessed 29 January 2025, https://www.jwire.com.au/from-australias-jewish-past-jacob-barrow-montefiore-improving-ship-travel-to-the-colonies.

[15] ‘The Advertiser,’ South Australian Advertiser (Adelaide), 2 February 1859, 2; ‘George III Sterling Silver Punch Bowl,’ Experience Adelaide, accessed 8 January 2025, https://www.experienceadelaide.com.au/photo-library/george-iii-sterling-silver-punch-bowl/.

[16] ‘The Colonel Light Ceremony,’ City of Adelaide,  https://www.cityofadelaide.com.au/community/creativity-culture/city-archives/archives-collection/source-sheets-reference-guides/reference-guides/the-colonel-light-ceremony/.

[17] ‘Asylum Life Office,’ Times (London), 16 March 1854, 4.

[18] Dauglish and Stephenson, The Harrow School Register, 58.

[19] ‘George Palmer, a Tory commissioner for South Australia settlement,’ AdelaideAZ,  accessed 19 February 2025, https://adelaideaz.com/articles/george-palmer--a-tory-conservative-colonisation-commissioner-for-south-australia--from-shipping-pedigree-and-admirer-of-william-light.

[20] National Probate Calendar, 7 June 1883, Principal Probate Registry, London, via Ancestry; Dauglish and Stephenson, The Harrow School Register, 58.

[21] ‘All Saints, Nazeing,’ Essex Churches, accessed 5 February 2025, https://www.essexchurches.info/churchpic.aspx?p=Nazeing&no=0316&ty=n&imgno=005&maximg=008.