Caleb Peacock, from family in tannery and other businesses, first South Australian-born mayor of Adelaide, 1875

Caleb Peacock (left) was the first South Australian-born mayor of Adelaide 1875-75 and involved with his father William and brother Joseph in the family tannery and woolbroking business, started in Grenfell Street, Adelaide city, in 1839. At right: Peacock and Son employees in 1871 in front of stacks of wattle/acacia bark that the company was the first to export.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia

The Peacock family produced notable business and civic figures in early colonial Adelaide.

William Peacock chartered the Glenalvon to take him and his family from England to South Australia, arriving at Adelaide’s Holdfast Bay on December 18, 1838.

William Peacock started his tannery business in Grenfell Street, Adelaide city, in 1839, This was the first major tannery, ahead of Dench & Co. and the Bean brothers, and the first to export acacia bark.

Tanning used wattle bark and created an industry gathering bark in the bushlands surrounding Adelaide and carrying it into town by the wagonload. Ure's Dictionary of 1867 described animal skins were first soaked with wattle bark in water, then pounded manually. The skins had hair scraped off the outer surface, then soaked a second time in milk of lime (slaked lime or calcium hydroxide as a slurry in water). Next, skins were fleshed by manually scraping flesh and fat from the inner surface. This animal tissue sat decaying on the skins in the tannery yard for days before treatment, contributing to the smell. Finally. the skins were softened then “immersed in a bath of pigeons', fowls' or dogs' dung for two or three days, which softens them”.

William Peacock was one of the original investors in the South Australian Mining Association that developed the lucrative Burra copper mines between 1845 and 1865 and a director (disqualified in 1860 through absence greater than six months but later reelected).

William Peacock was associated with the Congregational Church in Freeman Street (now part of Gawler Place), Adelaide city, and funded building the “Peacock” chapel in Ebenezer Place (off Rundle Street east). He then helped organise the building of the Hindmarsh Square Congregational Church, later to become an office and orchestral studio for ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) radio.

He was closely associated with John Lorenzo Young and his Adelaide Educational Institution that, for many years, used rooms at the Ebenezer Place and Freeman Street chapels. William Peacock’s youngest son Caleb was one of the first three pupils (others: Hubert Giles and John Partridge) at Young’s school that went on to graduate other prominent South Australians including Charles Cameron Kingston and Joseph Verco.

The Peacock business extended to woolbroking, with a fellmongery (treating skins and hides) factory at Adam Street, Hindmarsh, in the 1860s. 

Sons Joseph and Caleb both became involved in the family business and they followed father William into public life. William Peacock served on Adelaide City Council as councillor and alderman from 1842. He won the seat of Noarlunga in the South Australian Legislative Council (then the only house in parliament) against Major Thomas O'Halloran in 1851 to 1856. He held a Legislative Council seat from 1861 to 1869. Joseph and Caleb Peacock also became members of parliament.

Caleb Peacock also was the first South Australian-born mayor of Adelaide in 1875-77. He was a trustee of the Savings Bank of South Australia, a director of the National Bank of Australasia, from 1873 to 1893 (when the bank was liquidated) and a prominent member of the chamber of commerce.

The Peacock and Son Adam Street, Hindmarsh, property was sold in 1903 to fellmonger Michell and Sons.