George James Lewis

George James Lewis was born in Leith, Scotland in 1843, the only son of the Rev. James Lewis, a Senior Minister of St John’s Freechurch, Leith, and his wife, Marion Wyld. He had three older sisters, Marion, Margaret and Catherine Isabella born between 1837 and 1842, and one younger sister Alice Turnbull, born in 1849.

In about 1860, three years after leaving the Edinburgh Academy where he was a boarder between 1854 and 1857, and aged just 16 or 17 George set off to seek his fortune in Australia. According to newspaper reports in 1937, he had just 29 shillings in his pocket.

As reported on his gravestone he had gone to join “Brown & Co the first house of business to be started in Sydney”1. At the time one of the partners in the company was his uncle Edward Wyld who was willing to give the young George a “chance”. The chance paid off and George eventually became a partner in Brown & Co, Wine and Spirit Merchants, with premises in Sydney and London.

George never married and remained in Australia for just over 30 years, only returning to England sometime in the 1890s and eventually taking up residence at 32 Broadwater Down, Tunbridge Wells which he purchased in December 19221. However, census returns between 1901 and 1921 show him already living there with two of his unmarried sisters, Margaret and Catherine, until their respective deaths in 1917 and 1923.

At the age of 93 George died on 28th August 1937 leaving an estate with a gross value of £117,253 12s 8d in the UK and just over £43,000 in New South Wales. His death was reported and commented on both here and in the newspapers in Australia.

The reason for such extensive coverage of his death was the contents of his will. George never forgot the generosity shown to him by his uncle and, although Edward Wyld had died in Denham, Buckinghamshire in 1887, his surviving children were left £6,000 to be shared equally amongst them.

In Australia the three children of his cousin, George Herbert Wyld, were left £5,000 worth of shares in the firm then called “Harbottle, Brown & Co”, of 21 Lang Street, Sydney. George Herbert Wyld, who had also been sent to Australia at a young age, was the son of his mother’s brother George Wyld.

These legacies aside, George James Lewis also left legacies of varying value to other members of his family, his servants, Tunbridge Wells Hospital, the Scouts and other business connections in Australia.

George was buried next to his two sisters, on 1st September 1937, in Section B12 plot 337.