Louis Giustiniani

In 1835, the Western Australian Missionary Society, a society formed in Dublin and London by Colonel Frederick Irwin, appointed Giustiniani to establish a mission in the Swan River Colony, Western Australia.[1]

Rev Dr Giustiniani, the Missionary selected by the Society, is highly approved of by the London and Dublin Committee, for his spirit and acquirements; he is a man singularly fitted to conduct the Mission. Dr Giustiniani has been in the habit of preaching in London in English, German, French and Italian; he knows, also, the Hebrew, Syriac, Greek and Latin languages. He has a good practical knowledge of the sciences, botany, chemistry, mechanics etc. He has also taken a degree as a physician. He has fully proved his sincerity and devotedness to the cause by the sacrifices he has made.[2]

Giustiniani was from the noble Italian Giustiniani family, one of the princes of which had married into an English family, and Louis was connected to the heirs of the estate and title of Earl of Newburgh. He was Catholic by upbringing but had renounced the Catholic faith.[3]

His mission was to civilise and Christianise the aborigines,[4] and to learn their language.[1]

Dr Louis Giustiniani and his wife Maria arrived in the Colony of Western Australia on the “Addingham” on 26 June 1836.[5] On his arrival, Giustiniani was in poor health.[3]

Giustiniani's first church service was held at Guildford on 31 July 1836 that attracted an attendance of about 60 people in spite of “boisterous weather”. By this time his health had improved, but although he had only been in the colony a few weeks, he was accused of not having taken any steps towards the instruction of aborigines.[6]

His response included the statement that the settlers “stand in nearly as much need of instruction as the natives”.[7] This statement resulted in numerous letters to the Perth Gazette, particularly on the part of "A Publican",[lower-alpha 1] criticising his “excess of zeal”.[9]

Giustiniani visited York in September 1836 and preached the first sermon in the York district, at Joseph Hardey’s and then at Rivett Henry Bland’s. He promised to visit every 6 weeks.[10] This visit coincided with the murder of an aboriginal who was taking flour from a barn, by Ned Gallop, at the direction of his employer Arthur Trimmer, which Giustiniani investigated.

Governor Stirling gave Giustiniani a parcel of his own land at Woodbridge, Guildford, upon which to start a mission and school, which he intended to be along Moravian lines. His wife was probably a member of the Moravian Church. He succeeded in constructing a church which was situated approximately where the Guildford Grammar School Chapel now stands.[11]

He complained that the expenditure on law and order led to the neglect of education to prepare Aborigines for society. He berated the injustice that Aborigines were condemned for stealing, but settlers were not condemned for killing Aborigines, and the injustice that the testimony of Aborigines was inadmissible in court. He criticised the barbarity of slaughtering Aborigines and mutilating their corpses. Then he criticised the magistrates, Mackie and Moore for “leading a Bloody Crusade” against the Aborigines, concluding by calling on Colonial Secretary Lord Glenelg “to give to such inhuman magistrates, and to our self interested faction, their just recompense.”[1]

By the end of 1836, with these kinds of allegations, Giustiniani had alienated the colony's most senior clergyman, Colonial Chaplain John Burdett Wittenoom.[1]

Giustiniani and Wittenoom confronted each other number of times across a courtroom, with Wittenoom representing the Government and Giustiniani taking the position of aborigines. For example, in October 1837, Giustiniani defended three aborigines charged with the theft of flour, dough and butter in the district of the Upper Swan. He argued that aborigines should be treated as minors in law, for “as long as the Natives were unacquainted with the elementary principles of civilised society they ought not to be judged by the laws of that society”. His defence was not accepted. The aborigines were sentenced to hard labour and transportation.[12]

Giustiniani befriended William Nairne Clark, the editor of the Swan River Guardian, a solicitor and self‐proclaimed radical and government critic, who led a group of colony radicals.[13]

In the Swan River Guardian and correspondence, Giustiniani began to openly name and accuse important settlers of acts of violence against aborigines.

He accused "Arthur Trimmer and other gentlemen" of organising a "hunting party" to shoot as many Aborigines as possible.[14]Trimmer was married to Mary Ann Spencer,[15] one of King George Sound Government Resident Sir Richard Spencer’s daughters.

Giustiniani also claimed that Edward Souper shot and killed an Aboriginal woman and wounded an Aboriginal man, the woman's ears were cut off and Trimmer hung them in his kitchen as a trophy, his house being next to Bland who was the Government Resident. "Mr Trimmer who permits such barbarous acts in his house, is invited to the Governor's table".[16]

Giustiniani wrote a series of open letters to Lord Glenelg, critical of the treatment by settlers of the aborigines, including allegations of the “blood scene at York”. Each of these letters was published in the Swan River Guardian.[17] The letters were sent by private messenger, mistrusting the office of the Colonial Secretary, Peter Broun.[1] In these letters, he referred amongst other things to:

• the punitive expedition of Lieutenant Bunbury despatched by Governor Stirling against aborigines after the killing of Chidlow and Jones in July 1837 in which martial law was declared.[18]
• the incident in which Mcleod, the Acting Government Resident of York, had entered an Aboriginal camp at night, shooting into huts and wounding two Aborigines, including a woman.[19]
• the fact that the editor of the Perth Gazette had advocated “a second Pinjarra example.”[20]

Giustiniani was attacked for being a foreigner and a number of claims were made against him including:

• beating his wife, who had “more than once had been compelled to seek the protection of a neighbouring Magistrate against his violence.” [21]
• one of his catechists, Abraham Jones, was committing “certain improper acts and intercourse with the native women.” [22]

Giustiniani denied these claims[1] and Abraham Jones was cleared of the accusations.[23]

Giustiniani was also refused permission to become a British subject and buy land.[24]

The Western Australian Missionary Society dismissed Giustiniani and gave him 50 pounds for his passage home. There is no record of Giustiniani after his departure for England on 13 February 1838 on the "Abercrombie". By every measure, his mission failed.[1]

• Lesley J Borowitzka: The Reverend Dr Louis Giustiniani and Anglican Conflict in the Swan River Colony Western Australia, 1836–1838, Honours Thesis, Murdoch University, 2011.
• M. J. Bourke, On the Swan: A History of Swan District, Western Australia (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press for the Swan Shire Council, 1987)
• Bunbury, H. W. (Henry William); Morrell, W. P. (William Parker), 1899-1986; Bunbury, W. St. Pierre (William St. Pierre), b. 1859 (1930), Early days in Western Australia: being the letters and journal of Lieut. H. S. Bunbury, 21st Fusiliers, Oxford University Press, retrieved 24 December 2014CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)