Sir Henry Parkes GCMG

Readers note: This is an excerpt from the 200 Treasures exhibition catalogue, developed in 2017. This content was written as a brief biography on why this person was included in the exhibition.

Henry Parkes, a skilled bone and ivory turner, married Clarinda Varney, a butcher’s daughter, in Birmingham, England, in 1836. Unable to secure viable work, the couple left for the colony of NSW three years later, determined to return in better financial health.

Despite a limited education and monetary woes that dogged him all his life, Parkes’s drive and ambition saw him build a career as a leading politician in colonial NSW, publishing writings and delivering speeches that inspired the Australian Federation movement. He entered parliament in 1854 after winning the seat of Sydney (one of many seats from Kiama to Tenterfield that he would periodically hold in the colony). He went on to serve as premier of the colony for five non-consecutive terms and received imperial honours. Parkes’s greatest contribution was his work for the Federation cause.

In October 1889, his ‘Tenterfield Oration’ was a political landmark that set out the economic, military, political and emotional needs for Federation and earned Parkes the moniker ‘Father of Federation’. What is less clear is who was Federation’s mother. Clarinda had died in February 1888. One obituary noted that during her husband’s long career she never appeared once in parliament and ventured rarely ‘into society’.

Only one year after Clarinda’s death, Sir Henry scandalised society by marrying his mistress, Eleanor Dixon, 40 years his junior. Lady Eleanor Parkes was a more visible political wife and engaged in charitable causes championed by her husband, and had five children by her now statesman- like husband. Lady Eleanor died in July 1895 of cancer. Three months later Sir Henry scandalised society even more by marrying his 23-year-old housemaid, Julia Lynch. This union was short-lived as Henry died in April 1896 at age 81. Lady Julia Parkes lived infamously and in penury as Sir Henry’s widow until her own death in 1919, but long enough to see the fruits of her late husband’s vision of an Australian nation realised.