Gavin David Young

These lectures owe their existence to a bequest made by Jessie Frances Raven in memory of her father, the late Gavin David Young. The first series of lectures was delivered in 1956, and over the subsequent six decades further lectures in the original series were delivered. The lectures were reestablished and refreshed in 2022, and lectures given since then are published in this journal.

About Gavin David Young

Gavin David Young (1825–1881) arrived in South Australia in 1847 not long after the founding of the colony. He took up land at Mintaro with his brothers, and was afterwards in business at Watervale. Upon the opening of the Wallaroo Mines in 1860 he was appointed Superintendent, and acted in that capacity 1861–67, resigning to travel to England. Young returned to Adelaide in 1868, where he was a member of Adelaide's business establishment – acting as director of the Mercantile Marine Insurance Company, the Bank of South Australia, and the Wallaroo and Moonta Mining Companies – and cemented his status with the purchase of a grand residence in the Adelaide hills. Concerns with his health apparently prompted his return to England again in 1878; he died in the spa town of Pau in France, after a long illness.

The lectures were established in his memory by his only daughter, Jessie Frances Raven, who bequeathed £3000 to the University of Adelaide on her death in 1924. The bequest, according to Jean Fornasiero, was intended in part to reflect Young's ‘abiding interest in ideas and culture' – he was a member of the Adelaide book society, inaugural president of the Auburn library and founder of the Wallaroo Institute. Moreover, the Young family had a longstanding interest in the ideas of the French social philosopher Charles Fourier (1772–1837) – indeed, the decision by Young and his older brothers to emigrate to South Australia was the eventual result of a number of attempts by the family (primarily led by Young's brother Arthur) to found a utopian community along Fourierist lines. The choice to endow a lecture series in philosophy may indicate ‘that philosophy remained an essential interest for Gavin David Young even once the hope of the social experiment originally planned for Mintaro had evaporated’ (Fornasiero 2024: 33).

Reference

Jean Fornasiero (2024), ‘Gavin David Young (1825-1881), Restoring the Family Fortunes’, Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia 51: 24–37, https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.T2024112500001501328601960.