John Macadam

Early life

John Macadam was born at Northbankt, Glasgow, Scotland on 29 May 1827, the son of William Macadam (1783-1853) and his wife Helen, née Stevenson (1803-1507). His father was a Glasgow businessman, who owned a spinning and textile printing works in Kilmarnock, and was a Burgess and a Bailie (magistrate) of Glasgow. He and his fellow industrialists in the craft had developed, utilising chemistry, the processes for the large scale industrial printing of fabrics for which these plants in the area became known.

John Macadam was privately educated in Glasgow; he studied chemistry at the Andersonian University (now the University of Strathclyde) and went for advanced study at the University of Edinburgh under Professor William Gregory (chemist). In 1846-47 he went on to serve as assistant to Professor George Wilson (chemist) at the University of Edinburgh in his laboratory in Brown Square. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts that year and in 1848 a member of the Glasgow Philosophical Society. He then studied medicine at Glasgow University (LFPS, MD,1854; FFPSG,1855).

He was a member of what became a small dynasty of Scottish scientists and lecturers in analytical chemistry, which included, other than himself, his eldest half brother William Macadam, his immediate younger brother Stevenson Macadam (a younger brother Charles Thomas Macadam, although not involved as a scientist, was also indirectly involved in chemistry becoming a senior partner in a chemical fertiliser company) and nephews William Ivison Macadam and Stevenson J. C. G. Macadam, as well as the former nephew's daughter, his great niece Elison A. Macadam.

John Macadam was a tall and imposing figure, with long red hair, a flowing beard and powerful voice. All his life he commanded attention. He was a skilled, popular and eloquent lecturer who had obtained an outstanding knowledge of analytical chemistry and was always ready to pass on his knowledge. Before he left Glasgow he had published several papers on analytical chemistry.

On 8 June 1855 Dr. John Macadam MD, then aged 28, sailed for Melbourne, in the Colony of Victoria, Australia on the sailing ship Admiral arriving on 8 September 1855.

Australian academic career

In 1855 Lecturer on Chemistry and Natural Science at Scotch College, having been engaged for the position before leaving Scotland.

In 1857 he was awarded an MD ad eundem from Melbourne University in acknowledgment of his MD from Glasgow University.

In 1857-1858 he also taught at Geelong Church of England Grammar School (now Geelong Grammar School).

In 1858 he was appointed the Victorian Government Analytical Chemist.

In 1860 he became Health Officer to the City of Melbourne but apart from this work did not practise medicine. He wrote several reports on public health.

In 1861 he was secretary to the Victorian Industrial Exhibition and begun a series of lectures on chemistry for medical students at the Analytical Laboratory, with Richard Eades lecturing on material media. These classes hastened the formation of the Medical School at the University of Melbourne which opened in 1862.

In 1862 on 3 March he was appointed as the first Lecturer in Medicine (Chemistry, and Practical Chemistry) at the University of Melbourne School of Medicine. For the next few years he held classes for a small number of medical students in the Analytical Laboratory behind the Public Library.

He was also a member of the Board of Agriculture.

Political life

He became a Member of the Legislative Assembly of the self-governing Colony of Victoria as a radical and supporter of the Land Convention, representing Castlemaine.

He was Postmaster-General of Victoria in 1861.

He resigned from the legislature in 1864.

He had sponsored bills on medical practitioners and adulteration of food which became law in 1862 and 1863.

Royal Society of Victoria

Between 1857 and 1862, Macadam served as Honorary Secretary of The Philosophical Institute of Victoria which later became the Royal Society of Victoria in 1860, and was appointed Vice-President of it in 1863. He was editor of first five volumes of the Society's Transactions. He was active in erecting the Society's Meeting Hall (their present building) and was involved in the Institute's initiative to obtain a royal charter. He saw both happen while he held office when, in January 1860, the Philosophical Institute became the Royal Society of Victoria and met in their new building.

Burke and Wills expedition

Between 1857 and 1865, Macadam served as Honorary Secretary to the Exploration Committee of the Royal Society of Victoria which organised the Burke and Wills expedition.

The expedition was organised by the Society with the aim of crossing the continent of Australia from the south coast to the north coast, map it and collect scientific data and specimens. At that time most of the interior of Australia had not been explored by the European settlers and was unknown to them.

In 1860–61, Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills led the expedition of 19 men with that intention, crossing Australia from Melbourne in the south, to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, a distance of around 2,000 miles.

Three men ultimately travelled over 3,000 miles from Melbourne to the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria and back to the Depot Camp at Cooper Creek. Seven men died in the attempt, including the leaders Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills. Of the four men who reached the north coast only one, John King (explorer), survived, with the help of the indigenous people, to return to Melbourne.

This expedition became the first to cross the Australian continent. It was of great importance to the subsequent development of Australia and could be compared in importance to the Lewis and Clark Expedition overland to the North American Pacific Coast to the development of the United States.

After the heavy death toll of the expedition, initial criticism fell on the Royal Society but it became clear that their foresight could not have prevented the deaths and this was then widely recognised when it became known that as Secretary of the Exploration Committee of the Burke and Wills expedition, Dr. Macadam had insisted on adequate provisions for their safety.

Macadamia Nut named after him

The Macadamia nut was discovered by the European settlers and subsequently the tree was named after him by his friend and colleague, Dr. Ferdinand Mueller (1825-1896), Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne. The tree gave his name to Macadamia nuts. The genus Macadamia was first described scientifically in 1857 by Dr. Mueller and he named the new genus in honour of his friend Dr John Macadam. Mueller had done a great deal of taxonomy of the flora, naming innumerable genera but chose this "...a beautiful genus dedicated to John Macadam, M.D. the talented and deserving secretary of our institute."

Australian rules football

On 7 August 1858, John Macadam officiated as one of two umpires at a famous game of football played between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar. It was co-umpired by Tom Wills and John Macadam. The two schools have competed annually ever since, latterly for the Cordner–Eggleston Cup.

This game was a predecessor to the modern game of Australian rules football and is commemorated by a statue depicting the game outside the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Learned Societies

1847 fellow of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts

1848 a member of the Glasgow Philosophical Society (now Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow)

1855 elected Fellow of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons, Glasgow University

1855 elected member (1857–59 Hon. Sec), the Philosophical Institute of Victoria, later to become the Royal Society of Victoria

1860 Vice-President of Royal Society of Victoria

Death

Macadam died in 1865, aged 38, after a shipboard accident on the way to New Zealand.

In March 1865 he had gone to New Zealand to give evidence at the trial of Captain W. A. Jarvey, charged with the murder of his wife by poison. The jury failed to agree and on the voyage home Macadam fractured his ribs in rough weather. On medical advice he was advised not to attend the adjourned trial. However he insisted on going, accompanied by John Drummond Kirkland, his medical student assistant. He sailed in the Alhambra but died on the voyage on 2 September 1865. Kirkland gave evidence at the trial and Jarvey was convicted. Macadam's body, sealed in a lead coffin, was brought back for burial in the Presbyterian section of the Melbourne General Cemetery.

The Australian News commented that "At the time of his death, Dr Macadam was but 38 years of age; there can be little doubt that the various and onerous duties he discharged for the public must be attributed in great measure the shortening of his days." The Australian Medical Journal stated "For some time it had been evident to his friends that his general health was giving way: that a frame naturally robust and vigorous was gradually becoming undermined by the incessant and harassing duties of the multifarious offices he filled." The Inquest verdict (he died at sea) stated "His death was caused by excessive debility and general exhaustion."

Funeral

The funeral was large. The newspapers carried tributes and there were subsequent lengthier obituaries from learned societies published, such as that in the Australian Medical Journal and elsewhere. The Melbourne Leader described the funeral: "The coffin was drawn by four horses. Four mourning coaches contained the chief mourners and the more intimate friends of the deceased gentleman. A large procession followed, in which were several members of Parliament, the members of the Royal Society, the Chief Justice; the Mayor and corporation of the city of Melbourne. A number of private carriages and the public wound up the procession....At the University, the chancellor, the vice-chancellor, and a number of the students, all in their academic robes, met the funeral cortege, and proceeded the remainder of the distance". The chief mourner was his youngest brother, George Robert Macadam (1837-1918).

John Macadam's grave, surmounted by a marble obelisk, is in Melbourne General Cemetery.

Family

He had married Elizabeth Clark in Melbourne, Australia on 18 September 1856 (a year after he arrived from Scotland). She had arrived three days before the wedding with her maid on the Admiral, the same ship he had travelled out on a year earlier, which reached Hobson's Bay (Melbourne's port) on September 15, 1856, having set sail from London on 7 June 1856. Elizabeth Clark was probably born on 7 October 1832 in Barony parish Scotland, near Glasgow (her mother being Mary McGregor). She was the second daughter of John Clark, of Levenfield House in Alexandria, the Vale of Leven, a short distance north of Glasgow in West Dunbartonshire. His Levenfield Works were involved in similar work to Dr. John Macadam’s father William Macadam in Kilmarnock in the then lucrative business of textile printing for domestic and European markets. The Clarks and Macadams must have become known to each other in Scotland because of their respective father's business connections. Elizabeth died in 1915, in Brighton, Victoria.

John and Elizabeth had two sons:

John Melnotte Macadam, born 29 August 1858 at Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia and who died on 30 January 1859, aged 5 months (he was reburied with his father, whose monument bears the additional inscription: In memory of his only children John Melnotte Macadam Born August 29, 1858 Died January 30, 1859 followed by an inscription to his second son below it).

William Castlemaine Macadam, born on 2 July 1860 and died 17 December 1865 at Williamstown, Victoria, Australia. He died aged only five and had survived his father by only a few months. The inscription on his father's burial monument under His only children has him listed under his elder brother (above), who died in infancy, but does not for some reason give William's date of death on it.

His second son's death left John Macadam with no descendants.

After John Macadam's and her children's deaths his widow later remarried. She married the Rev. John Dalziel Dickie, who was pastor at Colac for 32 years. They married on 26 February 1868 They had 4 daughters. Elizabeth Dickie died aged 82 in 1915, in Brighton, Victoria, near Melbourne as the widow of the Rev. Dickie. He had died 25 December 1909.