Dr William Wyatt's wide polymath involvement and giving to Adelaide society from 1837 goes far beyond medicine
Among his many involvements in Adelaide society, William Wyatt was elected among the first proprietors of The Collegiate School of St Peter (pictured in 1880) and had a college house and annual prize named after him.
William Wyatt came to Adelaide in 1837 as a surgeon on the John Renwick but, although he claimed to have performed its first leg amputation, his wide involvement in the South Australian colony was mainly in other fields besides medicine.
Born the son of gentleman at Plymouth, Devon, England, William Wyatt was apprenticed at 16 to surgeon Thomas Stewart. He became a licentiate of the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries in London and the surgeon of a large dispensary. In 1828, he was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and began a private practice at Plymouth, where he was also curator of the museum of the Literary and Scientific Institution, and studied zoology and other sciences allied to medicine.
In 1836. he applied unsuccessfully for a post in South Australia but Wyatt was determined to emigrate with his wife and hoped to practise medicine and be an agricultural proprietor. At the first land sale, Wyatt bought six town acres (2.4 hectares) and later acquired many suburban and rural sections as far away as Port Lincoln. This would create wealth that enabled him to become a noted philanthropist.
In 1837, Wyatt was appointed the third protector of the Aboriginal people, the city coroner and colonial magistrate. Next year, he was made a justice of the peace, joined the local School Society and helped to found the short-lived South Australian Club. As Aboriginal protector, with no funds and no proper authority, he could do little but was blamed for every trouble. He was glad to resign in 1839.
Land values were quickly appreciating and Wyatt sold some of his blocks, making nearly £2000 profit on a £700 investment. In the 1840s, Wyatt bought more land during the depression, became an early member of the medical board in 1844 and its secretary until his death. He also helped to free Trinity Church from debt in 1848 and served on the Immigrants' Welcome Committee, became a director of the abortive Colonial Railway Company, and was elected one of the first proprietors of the Collegiate School of St Peter, where his name was later given to a house and an annual prize. In the 1850s, he was a leader in the South Australian Institute, Acclimatization Society, Botanic Gardens, Royal Society and Society of Arts.
In 1851, Wyatt he was chosen from a large field as the first inspector of schools. His initial plans were imaginative: a model school, training college, examinations for teachers and textbook depot. During his long regime, none of these was properly followed through. The government pursued a shoestring policy in education and Wyatt was too dignified to press for funds.
Wyatt earned his £300 salary by visiting schools seeking to be loved by children as silver-haired Uncle Wyatt, and punished miscreants by excluding them from singing lessons. After 15 years of his term, the government schools were in a deplorable condition and Wyatt couldn’t find a single teacher worthy of a first-class certificate. His resignation in 1874, on the eve of compulsory education being introduced, left the government with a vast and costly programme of belated reform.
In retirement, Wyatt published a Monograph on Certain Crustacea Entomostraca (Adelaide, 1883) and “Some account of the manners and superstitions of the Adelaide and Encounter Bay Aboriginal tribes” appeared in J. D. Woods and others' Native Tribes of South Australia (Adelaide, 1879).
Wyatt died in 1886, leaving an estate of nearly £50,000. His only child to survive infancy had been murdered by a drunken workman. He left his wife well provided for, and many annuities and legacies were specified in his will. The greater part of his city and suburban property, was left to the Wyatt Benevolent Institution “to benefit persons above the labouring class who may be in poor or reduced circumstances”.