Spencer, Walter Baldwin (1860 - 1929)

Summary

Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer arrived in Australia in 1887 to take up the chair of Professor of Biology, University of Melbourne (1887-1919). He was Honorary Director of the National Museum of Victoria from 1899 and was President of the Royal Society of Victoria in 1904.

Details

An Oxford graduate (BA 1884) and Lincoln College Fellow (1886), (Sir) Walter Baldwin Spencer was appointed to the foundation chair of biology at the University of Melbourne in 1887 and in this position was an active administrator and teacher (retired as emeritus professor 1919). He was president of the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, 1891-93 and 1895-97, president of the Royal Society of Victoria in 1904, and a trustee of the National Gallery of Victoria from 1895. He was zoologist and photographer to the first major scientific expedition to central Australia (the 1894 Horn Expedition) and edited the reports of the expedition (considered "one of the most substantial contributions to 19th Century exploration and natural history in Australia"). Baldwin Spencer also participated in numerous other field trips to Central and Northern Australia throughout his career, working in fruitful collaboration with Francis Gillen. In 1899 he became honorary director of the National Museum of Victoria. As Director he was responsible for supervising the museum's transfer to the Swanston Street site and the development of the museum's ethnographic collection. He donated his personal collection to the museum in 1917, which Included movies, wax cylinders and photographic negatives. He resigned from the Directorship in 1928 in order to return to England. FRS 1900; CMG 1904; KCMG 1916. Publications include: The Native Tribes of Central Australia 1899; Guide to the Australian Ethnographical Collection 1901, 1922; The Northern Tribes of Central Australia 1904; Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia 1914; The Arunta: a Study of a Stone Age People 1927; Wanderings in Wild Australia 1928.

Chronology

1887 - 1919

Career position - Foundation Chair of Biology, University of Melbourne

1888

Career event - Original [founding] member, Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science

1892

Career position - President, Section D (Biology), Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science

May 1894 - August 1894

Career position - Zoologist and phoographer, Horn Scientific Exploring Expedition

1895 -

Career Position - Trustee, The National Gallery of Victoria, Australia

1899 - 1928

Career position - Honorary Director, The National Museum of Victoria, Australia

1900

Award - Fellow, The Royal Society, London (FRS)

1904

Award - Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG)

1904

Career Position - President, Royal Society of Victoria, Australia

1907

Career position - President, Section F (Anthropology and Philology), Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science

1913 - 1921

Career position - President, Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science

1914

Career position - Vice President, Sections D (Zoology) and H (Anthropology), British Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting

1916

Award - Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG)

1917

Taxonomy event - Spencer was honoured by J.H. Maiden with the naming of Eucalyptus spencerana Maiden (1917)

1919 -

Career position - Foundation Councillor (Anthropology), Australian National Research Council

1919 -

Career position - Emeritus Professor, University of Melbourne

Related entries

Archival resources

Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science

• Australian Botanists - Biographies, MS 064; Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science. Details

Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales

• Angus & Robertson - Records, 1824 - 1933, ML MSS 314; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
• Arthur Wilberforce Jose - Records, 1919 - 1925, A7273; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
• Baldwin Spencer - Records, 1880 - 1929, ML MSS 29; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
• Walter Baldwin Spencer - Records, 1899 - 1928, ML MSS 875; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
• Walter Baldwin Spencer - Records, 1918 - 1923; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details

Museum Victoria

• Walter Baldwin Spencer - Records, 1899 - 1928; Museum Victoria. Details

National Herbarium, Melbourne

• Walter Baldwin Spencer - Records, 1925; National Herbarium, Melbourne. Details

State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection

• Walter Baldwin Spencer - Records, 1905 - 1911; State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection. Details

Wellcome Collection

• Victoria Eugenics Society, 1914 - 1939, SA/EUG/E.3; Eugenics Society [SA/EUG]; Wellcome Collection. Details

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

• McCarthy, Gavan; Smith, Ailie; Moje, Christine; Rigby, Rebecca, The Study of Australian Eucalypts, eScholarship Research Centre, 2013, http://www.eoas.info/eucalypts/index.html. Details

Books

• Ashenden, Dean, Telling Tennant's story: the strange career of the great Australian silence (Collingwood, Vic.: Black Inc., 2022), 338 pp. Details
• Carey, Jane, Taking to the field: a history of Australian women in science (Clayton, Vic.: Monash University Press, 2023), 297 pp. Details
• Mulvaney, D. J.; and Calaby, J. H., So much that is new: Baldwin Spencer, 1860-1929 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1985), 492 pp. Details
• Mulvaney, John; with Petch, Alison; and Morphy, Howard, From the frontier: outback letters to Baldwin Spencer (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2000), 338 pp. Details
• Spencer, Baldwin, Native tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia (London: Macmillan, 1914), 516 pp. Details
• Spencer, Baldwin, Wanderings in wild Australia, 2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1928). Details
• Spencer, Baldwin and Gillen, F. J., The northern tribes of Central Australia (London: Macmillan, 1904), 784 pp. Details
• Spencer, W. B., Guide to the Australian ethnological collection exhibited in the National Museum of Victoria (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1901), 88 pp. Details
• Spencer, W. B.; and Gillen, F. J., The native tribes of Central Australia (London: Macmillan, 1899), 671 pp, https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/2093212. Details
• Spencer, W. B.; and Gillen, F. J., Across Australia, 2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1912). Details

Book Sections

• Batty, Philip, 'Assembling the ethnographic field: the 1901-02 expedition of Baldwin Spencer and Francis Gillen' in Expeditionary anthropology: teamwork, travel and the ‘science of man', Thomas, Martin; and Harris, Amanda, eds (New York: Bergahn Books, 2018), pp. 37-63. Details
• Calaby, J. H., 'Baldwin Spencer's post-Horn Expedition collectors in central Australia' in Exploring Central Australia: society, the environment and the 1894 Horn Expedition, Morton, S. R. and Mulvaney, D. J., eds (Chipping Norton, N.S.W.: Surrey Beatty & Sons, 1996), pp. 188-208. Details
• Lyndon, Jane, 'Taming the Territory: Baldwin Spencer and Elsie Masson' in A trip to the Dominions: the scientific event that changed Australia, Russell, Lynette, ed. (Clayton, Vic.: Monash University Press, 2021), pp. 91-117. Details
• Morphy, H., 'Spencer at Oenpelli' in Glorious days: Australia 1913, Hetherington, M., ed. (Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press, 2013), pp. 159-67. Details
• Morphy, Howard, 'More than mere facts: repositioning Spencer and Gillen in the history of anthropology' in Exploring Central Australia: society, the environment and the 1894 Horn Expedition, Morton, S. R. and Mulvaney, D. J., eds (Chipping Norton, N.S.W.: Surrey Beatty & Sons, 1996), pp. 135-49. Details
• Mulvaney, D. J., 'Spencer, Sir Walter Baldwin (1860-1929), university scientist and administrator, anthropologist and connnoisseur' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 12: 1891 - 1939 Smy-Z, John Ritchie, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1990), pp. 33-36. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A120043b.htm. Details
• Mulvaney, D. J., 'Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer, 1860-1929' in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Details
• Mulvaney, John, '"Annexing All I Can Lay Hands On": Baldwin Spencer as Ethnographic Collector' in The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections, Peterson, Nicolas, Allen, Lindy and Hamby, Louise, eds (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2008), pp. 141-59. Details
• Spencer, W. B., 'The Aboriginals of Australia' in Federal handbook : prepared in connection with the eighty-fourth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting held in Australia, August, 1914, Knibbs, G. H., ed. (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1914), pp. 33-85. Details

Conference Proceedings

• Report of the second meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science edited by Spencer, W. Baldwin (Melbourne: Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1890), i-xxiv, 1-682 pp, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/50774. Details

Edited Books

• Spencer's Scientific Correspondence with Sir J. G. Frazer and Others (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932). Details
• Marrett, R. R.; and Penniman, T. K. eds, Spencer's Last Journey...with a Memoir (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931). Details
• Morton, S. R.; and Mulvaney, D. J. eds, Exploring Central Australia: Society, the Environment and the 1894 Horn Expedition (Sydney: Surrey Beatty & Sons, 1996), 408 pp. Details
• Mulvaney, John; Morphy, Howard; and Petch, Alison eds, 'My dear Spencer': the letters of F.J. Gillen to Baldwin Spencer (South Melbourne: Hyland House, 1997), 554 pp. Details
• Spencer, Baldwin ed., Report on the work of the Horn Expedition to Central Australia, 4 vols (London: Melbourne: Dulau and Co.: Melville, Mullen and Slade, 1896). Details

Journal Articles

• Goldhahn, Joakim; Taylor, Luke; Taçon, Paul S. C.; May, Sally K.; and Maralngurra, Gabriel, 'Paddy Compass Namadbara and Baldwin Spencer: an artist's recollecton of the first commissioned Aboriginal bark paintings in Oenpelli, 1912', Australian Aboriginal studies (2021), 436-65. Details
• Gunn, R. G., 'Spencer and Gillen's contribution to Australian rock art studies', Rock art research, 17 (1) (2000), 56-64. Details
• James, Rodney, 'The battle for Spencer barks from Australia to the U.S.A., 1963-68', La Trobe journal, 93/4 (2014), 181-95. Details
• Kean, John, '"Helpless" in Tierra del Fuego: Baldwin Spencer's last journey', Más allá del fin, 3 (2019), 75-80. Details
• Massola, A., 'Punta Arenas and Sir Baldwin Spencer's Grave', The Victorian naturalist, 89 (2) (1972), 54-56. Details
• Peterson, N., 'Visual knowledge: Spencer and Gillen's use of photography in The native tribes of Central Australia', Australian Aboriginal studies, 1 (2006), 12-22. Details
• Spencer, W. B., 'The Horn Expedition to central Australia', Nature, 51 (1895), 222-3. Details
• Spencer, W. B., 'Alfred William Howitt', The Victorian naturalist, 24 (1908), 181-9. Details
• Spencer, W. Baldwin, 'On the Nephridia of earthworms. [Topic only]', Report of the first meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1 (1889), 347, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15813437. Details
• Taçon, Paul S. C., Taylor, Luke, May, Sally K., Goldhahn, Joakim, Jalandoni, Andrea, Ressel, Alex and Mangiru, Kenneth, 'Majumbu ('Old Harry') and the Spencer-Cahill bark painting collection', Australian archaeology, 89 (1) (2023), 14-31. https://doi.org/10.1080/03122417.2023.2177949. Details
• Turnbull, Paul, 'Australian museums, Aboriginal skeletal remains, and the imagining of human evolutionary history', Museum & society, 13 (1) (2015), 72-87. https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v13i1.318. Pages 79, 81, 82. Details
• Veit, Walter, 'Social anthropology versus cultural anthropology: Baldwin Walter Spencer and Carl Friedrich Theodor Strehlow in Central Australia', Occasional paper (Strehlow Research Centre), 3 (2004), 92-110. Details
• W. S. B. [ie Spencer, Walter Baldwin], 'Joseph James Fletcher', Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, 52 (1927), xxxiii-xliii. Details

Newspaper Articles

• 'Funeral of Professor Kernot', The Age (1909), 7, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article196135626. Pall bearer. Details

Resources

• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/27147464. Details
• Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1226322. Details
• 'Spencer, Baldwin (1860-1929)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-529685. Details

Resource Sections

• Mulvaney, John, 'From the Frontier', in Ockham's Razor Transcripts, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3 December 2000, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s218950.htm. Details

See also

• Science and the making of Victoria, with Royal Society of Victoria, 2001, http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/smv/index_s.html. Details
• Farley, Simon, 'Flora and failure: A history of plants and people on the Parkville Campus' in Dhoombak goobgoowana: a history of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne, Ross L. Jones, James Waghorne and Marcia Langton, eds (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2024), pp. 6-21. Details
• Goad, Philip, 'Stolen stones and bare-faced brick' in Dhoombak goobgoowana: a history of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne - Volume 1: The Truth, Ross L. Jones, James Waghorne and Marcia Langton, eds (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2024), pp. 50-66. https://www.mup.com.au/books/dhoombak-goobgoowana-paperback-softback. Details
• Jones, Ross L, 'Place' in Dhoombak goobgoowana: a history of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne, Ross L. Jones, James Waghorne and Marcia Langton, eds (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2024), pp. 3-5, https://www.mup.com.au/books/dhoombak-goobgoowana-paperback-softback. Details
• Jones, Ross L. ; Waghorne, James; and Langton, Marcia, 'Introduction' in Dhoombak goobgoowana: a history of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne - Volume 1: The Truth, Ross L. Jones, James Waghorne and Marcia Langton, eds (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2024), pp. xiii-xxix, https://www.mup.com.au/books/dhoombak-goobgoowana-paperback-softback. Details
• Jones, Ross L.; Farley, Simon, 'Indigenous knowledge' in Dhoombak goobgoowana: a history of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne - Volume 1: The Truth, Ross L. Jones, James Waghorne and Marcia Langton, eds (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2024), pp. 311-321, https://www.mup.com.au/books/dhoombak-goobgoowana-paperback-softback. Details
• Leithhead, Barry, A vision for Australia's health: Dr Cecil Cook at work (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2019), 358 pp. Details
• McGregor, Russell, 'Northern optimism: the Preliminary Scientific Expedition to the Northern Territory, 1911', Northern Territory Historical Studies, 24 (2013), 39-51. Details
• Nettelbeck, Amanda (and others), The Overland Telegraph Line: A Transcultural History, [web resource; undated], South Australian Government, South Australia, 2023. https://otlhistory.sa.gov.au/. Details
• Olsen, Penny; and Russell, Lynette, Australia's first naturalists: indigenous peoples' contribution to early zoology (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2019), 223 pp. Details
• Pybus, Cassandra, A very secret trade: the dark story of gentlemen collectors in Tasmania (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2024), 318 pp. https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Cassandra-Pybus-Very-Secret-Trade-9781761066344. Pages 230-232. Details
• Serle, Percival, Dictionary of Australian biography (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1949). Details
• Stanner, W. E. H., The dreaming and other essays (Collingwood, Vic: Black Inc., 2011). Details