Adelaide gives birth to local government in Australia with its city council in 1840; James Hurtle Fisher as mayor

South Australia's former resident commissioner James Hurtle Fisher became Adelaide's first mayor, gaining 255 votes out of the total of 557 eligible voters for the city council that met for the first time on October 4, 1840.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia

Local government in Australia started with the Adelaide corporation and council brought into being on August 19, 1840, by a special ordinance passed by South Australian governor George Gawler and his executive council.

This followed the wishes in London of the South Australian colonisation commissioners who were clear that elected municipal institutions should be set up in any of the colony’s towns that reached a population of 2,000. The ordinance was modelled on the English Municipal Corporations Act 1835, with novel and complex voting procedures. It provided for the regular election of a council of 19 “common councilmen”, with four to be aldermen elected by the councilmen. A mayor would be elected from among the aldermen.

Councillors had to own or occupy a house in the municipality with a yearly value of at least £50 or having personal property worth at least £500, and not to have a pecuniary interest in any contract to be decided by the council. Ratepayers eligible to vote had to be males persons of 21 years or more who’d lived in the coolly for at least six months and who owned or were a tenant of property in the city valued at no less than £20 per annum. The had to live within seven miles radius of the city centre (The city boundaries were defined as the inner limits of the parklands according to colonel William Light’s plan of Adelaide.)

Electors could voluntarily form into as many electoral sections or "quorums" as there were candidates. Each electoral quorum, provided its members agreed unanimously, could return one member to the council. If the full number of council members wasn’t elected by the quorums, the rest could be elected by ratepayers who hadn’t voted in quorums. Half the aldermen, including the mayor as an alderman, were to remain in office for two years, while the councilmen had to retire annually

This system of electing councilmen was cumbersome and confusing. A voters' roll was compiled by returning officer Stanley Stokes who, after finding the total voters to be 557, announced that a quorum would comprise 31 voters. Only two such quorums assembled on election day, 30 October 1840, at the single polling booth in the centre of the intersection of King William, Hindley and Rundle streets where they signed their names on the forms with their candidate’s name. Thus only two members of the first city council were returned by quorums, and 17 remained to be elected by the normal ballot.

The next day, October 31, 1840, the successful candidates were summoned by the returning officer to the South Australian Club in Hindley Street, Adelaide city, where James Hurtle Fisher, the colony’s former resident commissioner, was elected mayor of Adelaide. Of the 43 candidates standing for election, Fisher headed the poll with 255 votes.

At the council’s first meeting on October 4, 1840, in the office of printer Robert Thomas in Hindley Street west, its first officers were be appointed: city messenger William Mc Bean and a temporary town clerk William Edwards, until October 28, when David Spence was appointed to the role). The first Adelaide city council was – Mayor: J.H. Fisher. Aldermen: J.H. Fisher, A.W. Davis, M. Smillie, G. Stevenson. Councilmen: N. Hailes, J. Brown, C. Mann, J. Hallett, W. Blyth, W.G. Lambert; H. Watson; T. Wilson; E. Rowlands; E.W. Andrews; J. Frew; W.H. Neale; S. East, W. Sanders; J.Y. Wakeham.