William Wyatt

William Wyatt (1804 – 10 June 1886) was a pioneer settler and philanthropist in South Australia.

Wyatt was born in Plymouth, Devon, England, the son of Richard Wyatt. He was apprenticed at 16 years of age to a Plymouth surgeon, Thomas Stewart. Wyatt continued to study medicine and obtained the qualification of M.R.C.S. in February 1828. For some time he was honorary surgeon to the Plymouth dispensary and was curator of the museum of the Literary and Scientific Institution.

Wyatt emigrated to South Australia as surgeon of the ship John Renwick. He arrived at Adelaide 14 February 1837, and practised there for a short time. In August he was appointed city coroner and also served as the third part-time Protector of Aborigines 1837 until 1839.

In May 1838 he was on the committee of the South Australian School Society, and was also on various other committees. On 28 February 1843 he was chairman of a meeting called to discuss the best means of civilizing the aborigines, in 1847 he was appointed coroner for the province of South Australia, and in 1849 he was a member of the provisional committee of the South Australian Colonial Railway Company.

Wyatt was appointed Inspector of Schools for South Australia in 1851 (retiring in 1874) and for the remainder of his life was in every movement that touched the educational or welfare of the colony. He was a governor of the Collegiate School of St Peter, one of the original governors of the State Library of South Australia, a founder and vice-president of the Acclimatization Society, on the board of the Adelaide Botanic Garden, and was chairman of the Adelaide Hospital 1870–1886. He was a member of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society and its president from 1849 to 1850. He was also secretary of the medical board for over 40 years.

In his final years though growing infirm, Wyatt still attended to his many duties, and passed some hospital accounts for payment just a week before his death in his eighty-second year on 10 June 1886. He bought some town lots at the first land sale held at Adelaide on 27 May 1837, which laid the foundation of a considerable fortune. He did many acts of philanthropy in a quiet way and showed much interest in the social life of Adelaide, but never entered politics. He was married and left a widow, his only child to have survived past infancy was murdered by a drunken workman. He published in 1883 a small Monograph of Certain Crustacea Entomostraca, and he contributed the chapter on the Adelaide and Encounter Bay aboriginal tribes to the volume on the Native Tribes of South Australia (published 1879).

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