Thomas Sutcliffe Mort

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Thomas Sutcliffe Mort (1816-1878) was born at Bolton, Lancashire, England. He is remembered as an Australian industrialist responsible for improving refrigeration of meat. He was renowned for speculation in the local pastoral industry as well as industrial activities such as his Ice-Works in Sydney's Darling Harbour and dry dock and engineering works at Balmain.

Mort's father was a businessman in Manchester. After his father’s death in 1834, Mort sailed for Sydney arriving in New South Wales in February 1838 in the Superb. Two of his brothers, Henry and James, later joined him in Sydney.

In Sydney, he commenced as a clerk in the business Aspinall, Browne & Co, later Gosling, Browne & Co. He married in 1841 and in 1843, he set up as an auctioneer. He sold wool and general goods. Although not the first to auction wool, Mort made some innovations in the way he managed wool sales and later livestock and pastoral property sales. His innovations included the extension of credit to selected purchasers, finance for running costs and the facility to consign wool for sale in London. Later wool-broking firms adopted his innovations. Mort worked in a number of partnerships before establishing Mort & Co in 1862.

In 1848, Mort was associated with the Australian Mutual Provident Society. In 1849, he was one of a committee, which funded a company to promote sugar growing at Moreton Bay. In 1850 Mort was a member of the Sydney Exchange Co, and in 1851 he was a director of the Sydney Railway Co. and was also involved in mining (gold, later also copper and coal) and other enterprises. In the 1850s, he opened a dry dock in Sydney, a business that was not as successful as he wished.

Mort returned to England for a visit in 1857-59. During that visit he bought many furnishings, pictures and other goods, in particular at a sale of the possessions of the Earl of Shrewsbury. He commissioned the architect Edmund Blacket to build a house to add to his house to display the new possessions. His gallery was open to the public.

From 1856 Mort began acquiring land near Moruya on the south coast of New South Wales. In 1860, Mort acquired the Bodalla estate near the mouth of the Tuross River. Mort eventually owned 38,000 acres in the district, a very substantial holding in that fertile area. Bodalla is alleged to have been originally known as ‘Boat Alley’. Mort’s vision for Bodalla was as a country estate to retire on and to demonstrate model land utilisation and rural settlement. Mort wished to have a tenanted dairy estate run as an integrated whole. Mort replaced the beef cattle that had been farmed there and carried out extensive improvements including clearing land, draining river swamps, erecting fences, laying out farms, sowing imported grasses, and providing milking sheds, cheese and butter-making equipment. Butter and cheese were produced for the Sydney market. By the 1870s, the tenants were disgruntled sharefarmers and the estate was in Mort’s control again run as three farms with hired labour.

In 1866, Mort expanded his dry dock into an engineering works. Mort offered shares to his employees and in 1875, the company was incorporated with limited liability having been managed before hand by a committee that included four leading hands. This was one of the earliest attempts at cooperation between capital and labour in Australia, and although the effort at sharing ownership was only partially successful, Mort always had good relations with his employees.

Also in the mid 1860s, Mort had been looking at refrigeration as a way of developing manufacturing orders, to ensure better access to the Sydney market for the butter and cheese he was producing at Bodalla and to offset the vulnerability of being exposed to falling wool prices. Mort financed experiments by Eugene Dominic Nicolle, a French born engineer who had arrived in Sydney in 1853 and registered his first ice-making patent in 1861. In 1861 Mort established at Darling Harbour the first freezing works in the world, which afterwards became the New South Wales Fresh Food and Ice Company. The first trail shipment of frozen meat to London was in 1868. Although their machinery was never used in the frozen meat trade, Mort and Nicolle developed commercially viable systems for domestic trade, although the financial return on that investment was not a great success for Mort.

As a part of his refrigeration works, Mort developed a large abattoir at Lithgow where sheep and cattle from western New South Wales were slaughtered and refrigerated for later transport. In 1875, to mark his achievements in the refrigeration techniques, Mort arranged a picnic for 300 guests. He organised a special train from Sydney and fed his guests food that had been refrigerated at his plant for over 18 months.^[1]

Mort was a prominent Anglican layman. He donated the land for St Mark’s Church, Darling Point, and commissioned Edmund Blacket to design the church. Mort contributed to the upkeep of the church and also to the building of St. Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney and St Paul’s College, University of Sydney. He was also the founder of Christ Church School in Pitt Street Sydney.

At the time of his death he was spoken of as "the greatest benefactor the working classes in this country ever had". Within a week of Mort’s death from pneumonia at Bodalla, a meeting of working men in Sydney had resolved to show the esteem and respect in which they held his memory. A sculpture in Macquarie Place by Pierce Connolly resulted from their resolution and was unveiled in 1883. ^[2]

Mort's business Mort & Co. became Mort & Co Ltd in 1883. Mort & Co Ltd merged with R Goldsbrough & Co Ltd in 1888 to form Goldsbrough Mort & Co Ltd. This firm traded from 1888-1963 when a merger formed Elder Smith Goldsbrough Mort Ltd which traded from 1963 - 1982. The present day business is Elders Limited.^[3]

[edit] See also

• James Harrison - another Australia refrigeration inventor.
• Richard Goldsbrough

[edit] References

• Alan Barnard (1974). “Mort, Thomas Sutcliffe”, Douglas Pike (General Editor): Australian Dictionary of Biography Volume 5 1851 – 1890 K-Q. Carlton, Victoria, Australia: Melbourne University Press, pages 299-301. ISBN 0-522-84061-2.

• Serle, Percival (1949). “Mort, Thomas Sutcliffe”, Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.

1. ^ Thomas Sutcliffe Mort and Refrigeration Works. History of Lithgow. lithgow-tourism.com. Retrieved on 2006-02-19.
2. ^ Issy Wyner (2003). Unveiling Mort's Statue, Macquarie Place, Sydney, 1883 (includes photograph). My Union Right or Wrong. A history of the Ship Painters and Dockers Union 1900-1932. www.takver.com. Retrieved on 2006-02-19.
3. ^ Bruce A. Smith (2005). Mort & Co (1849 - 1888). Guide to Australian Business Records. www.gabr.net.au. Retrieved on 2006-02-19.