Yorick Club (Melbourne)

The Yorick Club was a gentlemen's club in Melbourne, Australia, whose membership consisted originally of men involved in the arts and sciences. It was founded in 1868 and dissolved in 1894.

History

The club began informally with a series of informal meetings in 1868 held at the office of Frederick William Haddon in Spring Street, Melbourne. Among its earliest members were Marcus Clarke and Hamilton MacKinnon (his literary executor), Adam Lindsay Gordon, James E. Neild, J. J. Shillinglaw and George Arthur Walstab (1834–1909), author of Looking Back (1864). Later members included Henry Kendall, George Gordon McCrae and the poet Patrick Moloney (1843–1904).[1]

It originally met at King's Cafe in Collins Street, then established clubrooms in the same street above Haigh's tailor's shop,[2] and within a year its membership had grown to 100.[3] The club, which started as a lively, boisterous affair, developed into a respectable institution and expanded its criteria to admit men in the professions. In 1966 the club merged with the Melbourne Savage Club, with which it had had a cordial rivalry for some years.

A "Yorick Club" was formed in Adelaide in 1883,[4] which produced a few stage plays, but failed to thrive.

No connection with the Yorick Club founded in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1883, and which survived for nearly a century, has been found.

Bibliography
  • Thomas Carrington The Yorick Club: Its Origin and Development May 1868 to December 1910
  • Hugh McCrae My Father and My Father's Friends

References
  1. William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton and Barry Andrews (eds.) The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, 2nd edition 1994; Oxford University Press, Melbourne ISBN 0 19 553381 X
  2. "Melbourne". Geelong Advertiser (12, 267). Victoria, Australia. 2 March 1887. p. 3. Retrieved 13 August 2016 – via National Library of Australia.
  3. "Current Topics". Geelong Advertiser (7046). Victoria, Australia. 10 June 1869. p. 2. Retrieved 13 August 2016 – via National Library of Australia.
  4. "The Advertiser". The South Australian Advertiser. XXV (7700). South Australia. 23 June 1883. p. 4. Retrieved 13 August 2016 – via National Library of Australia.
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