William Maturin

William Henry Maturin, (1814 – 5 March 1889) was a senior public servant in the early days of the colony of South Australia and had a further career in Great Britain.

He and his brother Augustus arrived in Adelaide on the brig Elizabeth Buckham on 22 June 1843, and took the place of W. C. Darling in the Commissariat Department under administrator Sir Henry E. Fox Young, acting as his private secretary and holding the position of Deputy Assistant Commissary General and Auditor General, was promoted to Assistant Director in 1847, then Private Secretary to the Lieutenant Governor in May 1849, and at the same time appointed to the Legislative Council, but almost immediately relinquishing both when he was made acting Colonial Treasurer, reverting to Private Secretary in 1851.

In 1850 his assistant William Edward Beddome was convicted of embezzling £4,000, which could only have happened because of lax security on Maturin's part.

In 1857 the Commissariat Department was abolished, and on 1 June 1857 Maturin was relieved by Mr. Deputy Commissioner Monk, and retired on half-pay. He returned to England and was appointed to the Commissariat Department, also to a seat on the London directorate of the Bank of South Australia.

In November 1857 he was appointed Chief Commissioner of the newly formed Adelaide Waterworks Commission. He successfully stood for Light in the South Australian House of Assembly and in July 1858 he resigned his Commission, to be replaced by G. M. Waterhouse. Before he could take his seat however, he was appointed Land Titles Commissioner and resigned from Parliament, taking effect in September 1858. and he was made clerk in the Bullion Office, replacing George Hamilton. In June 1854 he became Bookkeeper of the Goolwa Railway, then in November 1854 he was appointed to the courts of Port Elliot, Goolwa and Encounter Bay.

In January 1855 he was charged with the 1854 theft of a gold ingot valued at £57 belonging to Frederick Burt while at the Bullion Office. He pleaded guilty, explaining he had diverted the ingot to cover for a discrepancy. Despite character references from a number of influential people, he was sentenced to a year's imprisonment. As often happens with notables who fall from grace, further references to him in the news media are hard to find. One report has him released after seven months and moving interstate under the assumed name of Collison.