Everything about Frederick Irwin totally explained
Colonel
Frederick Chidley Irwin (1788–1860) was acting
Governor of
Western Australia 1847 -
1848.
Born in
1788, Frederick Chidley Irwin was the son of Reverend James Irwin. In
1808 he was
commissioned into the
83rd Foot. He saw service in
Spain and
Portugal, and took part in several major battles of the
Peninsula War, for which he won a number of medals. In 1817 he was stationed in
Canada, and later in
Ceylon.
In
1828, the
British government decided to establish a colony on the western coast of
Australia, and a cousin of Irwin's,
James Stirling, was appointed its first
Lieutenant-Governor. Irwin was subsequently sent to the colony as a
major in command of a detachment of the
63rd Regiment of Foot, whose mission was to protect and help establish the colony. He arrived with his men on board
HMS Sulphur in June 1829.
Irwin's position as officer commanding the troops afforded him the further position of vice chairman of the
Legislative Council appointed by Stirling in January 1831. During Stirling's absence in 1832, Irwin was appointed to act as administrator of the colony.
In 1832, Irwin returned to
England. While there, he published
The State and Position of Western Australia, the first published account of the colony. He also sought
religious assistance for the colony, resulting in the arrival of the colony's first missionary,
Louis Giustiniani, in 1836. He returned to Western Australia in December 1836, having been promoted to
Major, and made permanent Commandant of the Western Australian Forces. He was further promoted to
Lieutenant-Colonel in 1845.
On the death of Governor
Andrew Clarke in February 1847, Irwin took office as acting Governor until the arrival of the new governor,
Charles Fitzgerald. His administration was extremely unpopular with the settlers of Western Australia, and the arrival of Fitzgerald was widely celebrated. He retired from the army in 1854 and died in
Cheltenham in 1860.
In 1991 the
Frederick Irwin Anglican School was opened and named in honour of his contributions to Western Australia.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Frederick Irwin'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://frederick_irwin.totallyexplained.com">Frederick Irwin Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
