Our Parliamentary Representatives - Charles Pasley M.L.A.
South Bourke October 1856 - March 1857Democracy can be said to have commenced in Victoria with the introduction of responsible government in 1856. Till then the Victorian Government had been part elected and part appointed. During the days of the gold rush, all classes, labourer, professional and gentlemen, had worked alongside each other. All were equal and called each other digger. In this ambient, the idea of democracy took root and resulted in the formation of a government fully elected by the people.
In the new government, the Doncaster-Templestowe area was in the electorate of South Bourke. The election was held in the Governor Hotham Hotel at Kew. The candidates each gave an election speech to the assembled voters and then the vote was taken by a show of hands. The first to be elected for South Bourke was Charles Pasley, a Military Engineer.
Pasley was born at Chatham in England in 1824. He had come to Victoria as Colonial Engineer in 1853. Melbourne was growing rapidly, and the primitive buildings of the early days were in urgent need of replacement. Pasley reorganised his department and his energetic approach soon gained him a reputation. When unrest erupted on the Ballarat Goldfields, Pasley volunteered his services and commanded the fighting in the centre. Although he had agreed with the use of force, as soon as the attack was over, he used all his powers to restrain the soldiers from taking reprisals on the rebels. Charles Pasley was nominated to the old Legislative Council as inspector of Public works in 1854. When the new constitution was introduced, a property qualification was required for election to Parliament. As a soldier, Pasley had never acquired property, so his father quickly lent him money to obtain the £2000 property qualification.
W. C. Haines, who became Premier of the first parliament gave Pasley the portfolio of Commissioner of Public works. Under his leadership, major public works were undertaken, including Parliament House, Victoria Barracks, the gaol at Pentridge, the lunatic asylum at Kew and the Customs House.
It is doubtful if Pasley had any association with Bulleen. However, in one matter he had an indirect effect on the area. His enthusiasm for the use of local stone in Melbourne buildings led to the offer of a prize for an improved building stone. Prizes were awarded to quarries in both Doncaster and Templestowe. When the Haines government was defeated in the following year, Pasley lost his portfolio. Being a man accustomed to constructive work, the idea of being an opposition member held no interest for him. Pasley resigned from Parliament and three years later left Victoria to resume life as a soldier and engineer. He died in England in 1890.
Many works remained as monuments to Pasley's life in Victoria, such as the Treasury Buildings designed by J Clark, the Elizabeth Street Post Office, and the fortifications at Williamstown and at the Heads.
1975 08 DTHS Newsletter
Pasley, Charles (1824–1890)
Charles Pasley (1824-1890), military engineer, was born on 14 November 1824 at Chatham, England, eldest son of General Sir Charles William Pasley, a leading military engineer, and his second wife Martha Matilda, née Roberts. Educated at the King's Grammar School, Rochester, and from 1840 the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, he was commissioned in the Royal Engineers on 20 December 1843. He served in Britain until 1846, in Canada and then in Bermuda whence he returned to England because of sickness. From early 1851 he was on the staff of the Great Exhibition. In April 1853 he was appointed colonial engineer of Victoria. He reached Melbourne on 17 September. His department, hitherto undermanned and demoralized, soon busied itself with port improvements and with the building of barracks, court-houses and offices throughout the settled districts. His captaincy in the Royal Engineers was dated 17 February 1854.When later that year unrest increased on the Ballarat goldfield, Pasley had no doubt that the situation was serious and offered his services to the commander-in-chief. On 28 November he reached the camp at Ballarat and took up duty as aide-de-camp to Captain Thomas of the 40th Regiment. He fully agreed with the firm measures taken by the authorities to bring matters to a head. In the assault on the Eureka stockade on 3 December Pasley commanded the skirmishers in the centre; after the place had been captured he was active in restraining soldiers from taking reprisals on the prisoners.
Pasley had been an official nominee in the old Legislative Council from October 1854 to November 1855 when the new Constitution was introduced. On 28 November he was appointed commissioner of public works in the ministry of W. C. Haines, thus acting as both political and professional head of his department. Some major Melbourne works projects were begun in 1856, including Parliament House, Victoria Barracks, the gaol at Pentridge, the lunatic asylum at Kew and in 1857 the Customs House. Many of these buildings reflected Pasley's taste. He consistently favoured the use of local materials, and recognized the virtues of the Melbourne basalt or 'bluestone'. His efforts to encourage local designers were well known. Among many extraneous duties he was president of the Central Road Board, a commissioner of the Melbourne-Mount Alexander railway, a councillor of the Philosophical Institute, a vice-president of the Melbourne Philharmonic Society and first patron of the Victorian Institute of Architects.
Since the new Constitution provided for a wholly elected parliament, Pasley could only continue as a minister by winning a seat at the forthcoming election. His father had lent him money to help in buying a house as his property qualification. He stood for South Bourke in the Legislative Assembly. With a liberal policy he favoured measures to check the alienation of public lands by grazing interests and would have reserved from sale the land adjoining railway routes. He supported state aid to religion. He won the seat easily, but lost his ministerial status on 11 March 1857 when Haines was displaced by J. O'Shanassy; Pasley resigned his seat in July.
In 1858 Pasley was vice-president of the royal commission on the colony's defences, which adopted his proposal for Melbourne to be defended by batteries on Hobson's Bay rather than at Port Phillip Heads, because of the performance of the artillery then in service and the expense of manning forts at the heads. However, when rifled ordnance was introduced in 1859, he recommended the fortification of the heads. The chief Melbourne monuments to his last years in the department are the Treasury, by J. J. Clark, and the General Post Office, which was completed after he left.
Late in 1859 the royal commission on the civil service, overruling Pasley's protest, recommended that the Public Works Department be headed by a non-professional. It was time for Pasley to go. He failed to obtain compensation for loss of office but was given leave on full pay to enable him to rejoin his corps and resume his military career. He was about to embark for England in July 1860 when news of a military reverse in New Zealand decided Major-General Pratt to take the field in person. Pasley, who had missed the Crimean War, could not pass by the chance of active service so close at hand. He offered his services and on 24 July embarked with General Pratt.
In Taranaki Pasley soon found himself employed as an engineer. In the attack on one of the Maori forts on the Kaihihi River on 11 October he was emplacing a heavy gun when the enemy opened a fusillade from concealed positions and he was severely wounded in the thigh. He was invalided to Melbourne in November. For his work in New Zealand he was promoted brevet major and mentioned in dispatches. His convalescence was prolonged but on 29 May 1861, after receiving many tributes, he sailed for England.
Rejoining his corps, Pasley was appointed commanding engineer at Gravesend. In 1864 he succeeded his former colleague, Major Andrew Clarke, as special agent for Victoria, a part-time office largely concerned with advice on armaments and procurement of warlike stores. Pasley dealt not only with land armaments but with the equipment of H.M.V.S. Nelson, and with the design, construction and armament of the turret-ship Cerberus and its dispatch to Victoria. He filled this appointment for four years.
In October 1865 Pasley became superintendent engineer of the naval dockyard at Chatham, which was about to undergo a major extension. He managed this project for eight years. In September 1873 he succeeded Clarke as director of works at the Admiralty. He held this office until September 1882 and was responsible for such important works as the entrance locks at Chatham Yard, dry docks at Devonport and Haulbowline, and the barracks and the Naval Engineering School at Keyham. In 1874 he was elected an associate member of the Council of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He retained his connexions with Victoria, and in July 1879 was appointed a commissioner for the Melbourne International Exhibition. In 1880-82 he acted as Victoria's agent-general and chairman of the Board of Advice in London. He was appointed a civil C.B. in April 1880, and in August 1881 on his retirement from the army he was promoted major-general. He died at his home, Bedford Park, Chiswick, on 11 November 1890. At Hampton, Middlesex, on 29 March 1864 he had married his cousin Charlotte Roberts, who survived him; they had no children.
Slight in stature, Pasley was self-effacing but contemporaries found him responsible, conscientious and sound in judgment; his gravity was tempered by a sense of humour so that he was liked as well as respected. However conventional in morals and behaviour, he was enterprising and original in his professional practice. While in charge of public works in Victoria he administered his department with skill, coping with wide fluctuations in financial appropriations, and he left his mark.
Select Bibliography
• G. Serle, The Golden Age (Melb, 1963)
• J. Stokes, ‘Major-General Charles Pasley, C.B.’, Royal Engineers Journal, 2 Feb 1891
• Punch (Melbourne), 6 Dec 1855, 12 June 1856
• Australian Builder and Railway Chronicle, 30 Apr, 29 May, 26 June, 21 Aug 1856, 26 Jan 1861
• Argus (Melbourne), 22 July, 18 Aug 1856, 25 July, 21 Nov 1860, 24 Jan, 11 May 1861
• CO 309/22/58.
Citation details
Ronald McNicoll, 'Pasley, Charles (1824–1890)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/pasley-charles-4370/text7109, published first in hardcopy 1974, accessed online 25 July 2017.
Ronald McNicoll writing in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 5, (MUP), 1974
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/pasley-charles-4370
Charles Pasley (engineer)
Major-General Hon. Charles Pasley, C.B., R.E., (14 November 1824 – 11 November 1890) was a British Army officer and Colonial Engineer, Commissioner of Public Works and politician in colonial Victoria.[1]Early life
Pasley was the son of Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Pasley, K.C.B., and his second wife Martha Matilda née Roberts.[2] He was born at Brompton barracks[3] Chatham, Kent, England, and was educated at the King's School, Rochester, and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich from 1840.[2] He obtained a commission as second lieutenant in the royal engineers on 20 December 1843. He went through the usual course of professional instruction at the military school at Chatham, of which his father was the head, and proved himself so good a surveyor and mathematician that for some months he temporarily held the appointment of instructor in surveying and astronomy. After serving at several home stations he was promoted first lieutenant on 1 April 1846, and in June was sent to Canada. He was employed on the ordinary military duties of his corps until 1848, when he was appointed to assist in the survey of the extensive and scattered ordnance lands on the Rideau canal. The outdoor survey was done in the winter to enable the surveyors to chain over the frozen lakes, and to avoid the malaria and mosquitoes of the swamps.[3]
In 1849 he was sent to the Bermuda islands, and while there was mainly employed in superintending, on behalf of the colonial government, the work of deepening the channel into St. George's Harbour. In November 1850 he returned to England on account of ill-health. In February 1851 he was selected to join the staff of the Great Exhibition of that year.[3] He served at Bermuda in 1850.[1]
Career in Australia
Pasley arrived at Melbourne on 18 September 1853, having been appointed in the spring of that year Colonial Engineer to the colony of Victoria. He found himself at the head of a considerable department, to which that of Colonial Architect was very soon added, and subsequently that of Central Road Board. In 1854 he was member of a commission to make arrangements for an exhibition of colonial products at the Paris Exhibition in the following year.[1] In October 1854 he was nominated to a seat on the Victorian Legislative Council.[4] About this time the Ballarat riots broke out, and he offered his services to the Governor, Sir Charles Hotham, and was sent to the goldfields on a special mission. In 1855 the new constitution came into force in Victoria, and the first responsible ministry was formed by William Haines in November 1855, General Pasley taking the portfolio of Commissioner of Public Works. On 10 December he was appointed a member of the Executive Council, and a few months later was made by an Act of Council a joint trustee with Captain (later Lieut.-General Sir) Andrew Clarke, R.E., for the Melbourne and Mount Alexander Railway, purchased by Government. In 1856 Captain Pasley was elected to the first Victorian Legislative Assembly for South Bourke, and in March 1857 he resigned with the rest of the Ministry, but ultimately consented to remain as professional head of the Department of Public Works.[1]
The Houses of Parliament were amongst the public buildings erected under Pasley's direction, and some of the principal streets of Melbourne were laid out during his term of office. The last public building with which he was connected was the Melbourne Post Office, but this was not completed till after his return to England. Captain Pasley also took great interest in the Botanic Gardens and the Herbarium, which was built under his auspices. In 1860 he resigned his connection with the Public Works Department, with the intention of returning to England; but his interest in the welfare of the colony of Victoria and of the city of Melbourne was as keen as ever in after years.[1]
Before his departure from the colony, the New Zealand war broke out, and he immediately offered his services, which were accepted the same day, and he was appointed an extra member of Major-General (afterwards Sir) Thomas Pratt's staff. Three months later he was severely wounded by a bullet in the thigh, while in charge of the trenches, after laving out and constructing a parallel needed in the capture of the Kaihihi Pas. His wound proving serious, he became unfit for further duty, and returned to Melbourne invalided. For his services in New Zealand he was mentioned in despatches, and promoted to brevet-major, he having become captain soon after his arrival in Melbourne.[1] Pasley also received the New Zealand Medal.[3]
Later life
Pasley left for England in May 1861, in the steamship Great Britain. He left Melbourne amid popular demonstrations of regret. On arrival in England in August 1861 Pasley was appointed commanding royal engineer at Gravesend. In 1862 he read a paper before the Royal United Service Institution on the operations in New Zealand, to correct some misapprehensions on the subject which existed in the public mind with regard to his old general.[3]
In 1864 he was employed as Acting Agent-General for the colony of Victoria, a temporary appointment which he held for four years, with leave from the War Office, and afterwards from the Admiralty, to accommodate the colony until they could make a permanent appointment. In this capacity he superintended on behalf of the colony the equipment of the HMS Nelson, and the design, construction, armament and despatch of the HMVS Cerberus turret-ship. He again acted as Agent-General for Victoria from 1880 to 1882. From 1873 to 1882 he held the Imperial appointment of Director of Works of the Navy, in succession to Sir Andrew Clarke. Pasley became colonel in April 1876, and retiring from the army with the honorary rank of major-general in August 1881. General Pasley, who died at Chiswick, London, on 11 November 1890, married at Hampton, Middlesex, on 29 March 1864, Charlotte, eldest daughter of John Roberts, of Barzell, Sussex, who survived him.[1]
References
Mennell, Philip (1892). "Wikisource link to Pasley, Major-General Hon. Charles". The Dictionary of Australasian Biography. London: Hutchinson & Co. Wikisource
McNicoll, Ronald. "Pasley, Charles (1824–1890)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: Australian National University. Retrieved 28 June 2013.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Pasley, Charles (1824–1890)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
"Pasley, Charles". re-member: a database of all Victorian MPs since 1851. Parliament of Victoria. Retrieved 28 June 2013.
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Pasley_%28engineer%29 as at 25JUL2017
Medal - Australian International Exhibitions Commissioners,1879 - 1881 AD https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/articles/1891
Charles Pasley
Born: 14 November 1824 (Chatham)
Died: 11 November 1890 (Chiswick, England)
Parents: Sir Charles William, KCB, and Martha Matilda, nee Roberts
Marriage: 29 Mar 1864 Hampton, Middlesex, England, Charlotte Roberts
Occupation: Army officer
Religion: Church of England
Lieutenant R. E. 1846, brevet major 1861 after service in N.Z., and major-general 1881. Following appointments in Canada and Bermuda, arrived Melbourne 17 Sept 1853 as colonial engineer; inspector of Public Works 1857; volunteered for service at Eureka 1854 and in the N.Z. war of 1860; wounded and invalided to England 1861; special agent for Vic. 1864-1868, acting agent-general 1880-1882; director of engineering and architecture to the Admiralty 1873-1882.;
http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/re-member/details/637-pasley-charles
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