The first Adelaide city council folds after three years in 1843, strangled by a worsening revenue struggle from its start
Adelaide city between 1843 and 1849 viewed from the nortehn side of the River Torrens. The bridge was 200 yards east of the later Morphett Street bridge and close to a ford where bullock drays crossed when the bridge was out of action and where they filled the barrels for the small city's water supply. The flagpole was at the entrance to government house. Also to the left are the first Legislative Council chamber and the more imposing Bank of South Australia. A limestone quarry used for construct public buildings is also showm
Image from a watercolour by Robert Davenport, courtesy of State Library of South Australia
The first Adelaide city council folded after three years in 1843, strangled by a worsening revenue struggle from its start .
South Australian governor Henry Young appointed Australia’s first city corporation in 1840 when Adelaide’s population had exceeded 2,000 and qualified as a municipality under the British system. The Adelaide council’s 19 members chose four to be aldermen and a mayor (James Hurtle Fisher). Along with Fisher as mayor, another prominent colonial figure, John Morphett, was the council's treasurer in late 1840 but its finances would be a growing problem.
The council was established as the South Australian colony entered an economic depression and it began amassing a rising debt when it was unable to collect rates.
The extent of council work was confined to Hindley and Rundle streets, Adelaide city, and done largely by prison labour. By 1842, city roads were described as being “in a very shocking state, and in the condition of a ploughed field [and were] so bad that the bullock drays used the footpaths instead and pedestrians were driven into the road”.
The South Australian government handed over the running of a two-storey stone slaughterhouse in the west parklands to the new city corporation. This was a large source of revenue but the city council was surprised to receive, at the end of its first year, an £853 bill from the colonial architect for the construction of the slaughterhouse.
The Adelaide city corporation had started with a budget of £2,000 that was borrowed from the South Australian government, with almost half of this to be spent on staff wages. From the assessed rates of 1840, only £1,333/6/8d was collected. Following wages and expenses, the corporation only had £17 left to pay for the slaughterhouse. As this crisis intensified, the corporation's finances worsened and the council became legally defunct in 1843.
For the next six years, the city was managed by the police commissioner (Boyle Travers Finniss 1843-47, George Frederick Dashwood 1847-52). and, as conditions worsened, there were strong complaints in the newspapers about the state of the town. In an 1848 letter to The South Australian, “A Citizen” complained about “filth of every kind”’ in the streets: ‘”Whose duty it is to suppress these nuisances? What is the Town Surveyor paid for? Is it that he may caper about on horseback and show off his Jack boots?”
In 1849, a new board of city commissioners were appointed but this interim arrangement was short-lived, partly due to manpower shortages caused by the rush to the Victorian gold fields.
