George Higinbotham

George Higinbotham (19 April 1826 – 31 December 1892)

Judge In 1880 Higinbotham was appointed a puisne judge of the Supreme Court, and in 1886, on the retirement of Sir William Stawell, he was promoted to the office of chief justice. Higinbotham was appointed president of the International Exhibition held in Melbourne in 1888–1889, but did not take any active part in its management. One of his latest public acts was to subscribe a sum of £10, 10s. a week towards the funds of the strikers in the great Australian labour dispute of 1890, an act which did not meet with general approval.

Women's rights Higinbotham was a champion for women's rights from the beginning of his parliamentary career, when he proposed the Married Women's Property Bill and was posthumously lauded by the Women's Political Association of Victoria, for proposing women's suffrage in 1869.

He is mentioned as an exception to typical men of the nineteenth century as a "legislator of unusual wisdom for that era" in Henrietta Dugdale's utopian novel "A Few Hours In A Far Off Age".

Death Higinbotham died at South Yarra, Melbourne, on 31 December 1892, and was survived by his wife, two sons and three daughters. He had a private funeral at his own request.

Commemoration

There is a bronze statue to him outside the Old Treasury Building, Melbourne. Furthermore, the former division of Higinbotham was named for him.