Henry Kingscote, key director of 1835 South Australian Company, a wealthy philanthropist and first-class cricketer
A Kingscote One Pound was among the currency (also sixpence, one, two, five and ten shillings) dated July 1, 1836, and printed by Chapman & Co, 27 Cornhill, London, to be used as South Australian Company promissory notes for local payments by South Australia’s first European settlers when they arrived at Kingscote, Kangaroo Island, that year. Company chairman and financier George Fife Angas arranged for one of the first four settler ships to transport a cashier and accountant (Edward Stephens), banking clerk (William Malpas) along with a prefabricated banking house, ledger, iron chest, coins and banknotes to be set up on island.
Image courtesy Coinworks.
Henry Kingscote, a founding director of the South Australian Company in 1835, was, in the vein of other founding supporters of the South Australian province, a wealthy Christian philanthropist but also a first class cricketer in England from 1825 to 1844.
Kingscote’s name appears on the deed of settlement and royal charter of incorporation of the South Australian Company in 1836 and also on the province’s first Kingscote currency, used a promissory notes by the company when the first four settlement shipsit sponsored arrived at Kangaroo Island that year at what became the town of Kingscote.
Henry Kingscote, born in Hinton, Hampshire, England, in 1802, and educated at Harrow, had family trading wealth to allow him devote much of his early life to cricket and rider to hounds for hunting. Kingscote was six-foot-six-inches tall, giving him an advantage in cricket with his first match at Lord’s cricket ground, London, in 1823. He made 33 known appearances in what were regarded as the inaugural first-class cricket matches including eight for the Gentleman (against the Players) from 1825 to 1834. In 1827, Kingscote was elected president of Marylebone Cricket Club.
A narrow escape in middle age from drowning turned Kingscote’s attention to religious matters. He became a friend of bishop Charles Blomfield and, with him, founded he Church of England Scripture Readers' Association and the Metropolitan Visiting and Relief Association. In 1846, Kingscote he published a pamphlet letter to thearchbishop of Canterbury on the church’s needs, urging lay agency to be extended and new bishoprics founded.
In 1846. Kingscote helped found the Southwark fund for schools and churches and, in 1847, he helped ease the distress in Ireland. He sent supplies to the troops during the Crimean war. In 1868, Kingscote was one of the founders of the British and Colonial Emigration Society, the scheme for workshops for the indigent blind, and of the National Orphan Asylum at Ham Common.
