Kither's Buildings in Rundle Street, Adelaide city, for William Kither, butcher with a heart: 'knight of the cleaver'
Kither's Buildings (at left, next to P. McRostie & Co.), with three shops including W. Kither Butchers, in Rundle Street, Adelaide city, seen here during a parade to farewell South Australian mounted troops leaving for the South Africa (Boer) war in 1900. Kitcher's Buildings originally had "MDCCCLXXX" (1880) and “Kither’s Buildings” on the facade. Inset: The facade in the 21st Century.
Image by Ernest Gall, courtesy State Library of South Australia
Butcher William Kither, the “knight of the cleaver”, had a landmark 19th Century Rundle Street building among his property dealings in Adelaide city where he became an alderman.
William Kither arrived in South Australia in 1855 with his parents and siblings. He first worked for a draper before becoming an apprentice butcher. Later he encouraged his father to buy the butcher shop. In 1857, William Kither senior took over a butchery at 117 Rundle Street and then the business of “Mr. Hince, next to the Red Lion” at 13 Rundle Street “continuing to supply Meat of Prime Quality, at the lowest remunerative rates for cash payments".
After his father died in 1869, William junior ran the business with his mother Sarah as “S Kither & Son” until she died in 1875 when it became “W Kither”. As “Butcher and Sausage Maker”, Kither had the “ honour to announce that he will Open His Elegant and Commodious Premises, recently rebuilt at great expense”, designed by Rowland Rees and Joseph Hornabrook, “Kither’s Buildings, Rundle-Street on Saturday, July 19, 1879.”
Replacing the former shop in 1880, the new Italian Renaissance style building, incorporating three premises, at 135-139 Rundle Street, captured popular attention when the South Australian Electric Company introduced the first commercial lighting in Adelaide there on a Saturday night in 1882.
The butcher’s shop within Kither's Buildings opened with “an icehouse in this cellar in which to keep meat during the summer, and the accommodation otherwise is well adapted for the curing and export trade Mr. Kither carries on with Mauritius”. Kither became a Hindmarsh Ward representative on Adelaide city council and alderman in 1883 as, the Register newspaper noted, “a stanch advocate of asphalting in preference to woodblocking for street pavements.”
In 1884, Kither introduced the first butcher’s refrigerator in Adelaide, installed by its inventor Edmund Taylor. From May that year and continuing through the severe winter, the Evening Journal reported on “Tuesday from noon until 2 o'clock in the afternoon the first free distribution of soup and bread to the distressed poor was made at the premises of alderman Kither, who on that occasion provided both articles. . . there is a great deal of distress in the city. Altogether about 30 gallons of soup and 40 loaves of bread were carried off by eager and indigent and genuinely grateful applicants, and the average daily demand will probably be about double that quantity. . . The soup and the bread were distributed by three private gentlemen who have interested themselves in the movement, and they were assisted by two of the City Missionaries and Miss Green.” Kither also was a life governor of the children's hospital and the blind, deaf and dumb asylum, and was on the Adelaide Hospital board for 10 years
William Kither died in 1911 leaving a widow and nine children. The business was carried on by his son Clarence Maturin Kither. Kither’s Buildings in Rundle Street were sold in 1932 when became the workshops of the glass merchants Clarksons Limited and Kither’s moved to King William Street, Adelaide city.
