The life and work of C.H. Pearson, 1830-1894

Abstract

This thesis is a biography of a nineteenth century Fellow of Oriel who emigrated to Australia in middle age and laboured there for most of his remaining years as educational pioneer and reformer, liberal politician, and journalist. There have been two principle aims: to show how his liberals ideas evolved, first in England, later in his wide travels, later still in his varied experiences of colonial life; then to show how he attempted to put his ideas into practice. He is first shown growing up in the Evangelical tradition, then coming into contact with the High Churchmanship of Professor Brewer, the Christian Socialism of F. D. Maurice, the free-thinking of his uncle Bebington; then attempting to follow Goethe in a search for all-round culture, lecturing in History, writing an eye-witness account of the Polish insurrection against Russia in 1863; then suddenly throwing up the Old World for the New and buying a South Australian farm, returning to England defeated by drought, but impressed by the fruits of democracy, seeking satisfaction again in travel and in medieval scholarship, returning once more to his colonial farm, marrying, being obliged for his wife's health to live in Melbourne, lecturing, acting as foundation headmaster of the first Australian school to provide a first-class education for girls; then plunging into politics and attempting to implement radical reforms of the land laws, the constitution and the colony's whole education system from the University to the Reformatory Schools; then experiencing a lean period, drawn once more to England but coming back to take the Education portfolio and to carry on the work he had begun - extending technical education, seeing to the foundation of a Teachers' College, resisting attempts to change the secular character of the State education curriculum; finally returning to England, sick, and deprived of most of his savings by the 1890's depression, but able to enjoy a last few months of fame following the publication of a book summarizing his experiences and accurately predicting the sort of world the next two or three generations would have either to enjoy or endure.