George Bennett b. 31 January 1804

  • Artist (Draughtsman)
After two previous trips to Australia as a natural historian, George Bennett finally settled in Sydney in 1836 and worked as a medical practitioner. He maintained his interest in natural history however and became intimately involved with the Australian Museum, eventually as its Museum Director and Curator.

sketcher, medical practitioner, natural historian, museum curator and director, was born on 31 January 1804 in Plymouth, England. He first visited Australia in 1829 on one of his many natural history expeditions, then returned in 1832 and again in 1836 and remained in Sydney, where he set up a successful medical practice. Bennett published many papers on natural history, was a fellow of the Linnaean Society and a corresponding member of the Zoological Society. He wrote up some of his extensive travels in the Pacific region in Wanderings in New South Wales … being the Journal of a Naturalist (2 vols, London 1834). His 'Ornithorhynchus paradoxus or Water Mole’, an abstract from the 1853 Transactions of the Zoological Society , was published in the Illustrated Sydney News on 1 April 1854. Another contributor to these 'Australian Natural History Notes’ was William Sheridan Wall .

Bennett, a key figure in the newly established Australian Museum, was succeeded as curator by William Branwhite Clarke , then Wall. Interpersonal relationships at the museum were volatile ( see G.F. Angas , H. Barnes and J.L.G. Krefft ) and Bennett’s only certain art work, annotated Wall on the Whale after Clarke W.B. , is a scurrilous pencil sketch depicting Wall astride a harnessed and spouting whale. It is drawn on the end-paper of Bennett’s copy of Wall’s History and Description of a New Sperm Whale (Sydney 1851, Mitchell Library) which Bennett had rebound and retitled Macleay’s Sperm Whale . He glued to the front end-paper a review stating that Wall 'had the assistance of the Committee of the Museum’ in the book’s compilation and bracketed off 'by William S. Wall, Curator’, adding 'by William S. Macleay Esq.’ (a more eminent naturalist) to the title-page.

In 1890 Bennett received the Clarke (W.B.) Memorial Medal from the Royal Society of New South Wales and was awarded an honorary gold medal by Britain’s Royal College of Surgeons in recognition of his contribution to zoological science. He died in Sydney on 29 September 1893. Married three times – his third wife was Sarah née Adcock – there were eight Bennett children in all, two of whom died in infancy.

Writers:
Henderson, Beryl
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011