James Greenwood (25 August 1838 – 6 November 1882) was an English-born Australian politician.
Greenwood was born at Stansfield near Todmorden, West Yorkshire to Richard and Betty Greenwood. He studied at the University of London, receiving a Master of Arts in theology, philosophy and economics in 1866. John Clifford the Baptist Nonconformist minister and politician was a contemporary. On 26 June 1866 he married Mary Anne Wallis Ward; they had seven children, of whom four survived to adulthood.
Baptist pastor 1867–1876 In 1867 Greenwood became pastor at the Stoney Street Baptist Church, Nottingham.
Greenwood migrated to Sydney to take up the position of pastor at the Bathurst Street Baptist Church in Sydney, arriving on the Jason on 25 July 1870.The Sydney Morning Herald Wed 27 Jul 1870 He succeeded the Rev James Voller in the parish, as director of the Baptist Training College (1871) and in the residency of the Baptist Union of NSW.
From 1836 to 1938, the Bathurst Street Baptist church was on the northeast corner of Kent and Bathurst Street, where today stands Council House. In 1938, the church moved to its current location at 619 George Street.
In this role he celebrated the marriage of Captain Joshua Slocum and Virginia Walker on 31 January 1871.Slocum – Walker – January 31, by the Rev. James Greenwood, Captain Joshua Slocum, ship Constitution, Boston, Mass. U.S., to Virginia Albertina, daughter of William H. Walker, Survey Department. The Sydney Morning Herald Friday 24 Feb 1871
In 1874, on a trip to Melbourne,The Sydney Morning Herald 19 Oct 1881 he met Charles Clark and Charles Bright. Clark was a popular pastor at the Baptist church in Albert Street East Melbourne. Clark would go on to resign his ministry for a lucrative career as a public speaker, establishing that profession in Australia. Bright, the sometime editor of Melbourne Punch, moved on to be aspirant politician, campaigning journalist, education reformer and Free thinker. In several ways, Greenwood's own career would, with less success, follow these paths.
In 1875, Greenwood returned to Melbourne to preach at the Albert Street Baptist church where his sermons were listened to with 'great attention'.The Age, 25 January 1875
The Sydney congregation became uncomfortable with their pastor's involvement in the emerging campaign over State education and requested he choose the campaign or the ministry. Greenwood was also uncomfortable. After his death, the papers reported that he had begun to doubt his calling and he left the ministry with the intention of studying for the Bar, but was diverted from that course by the education campaign and his election to Parliament.The Sydney Morning Herald 30 Nov 1882
In 1876, he published his 3 valedictory sermons at sixpence each – The damned City's last warning, All for the best, and Commercial morality – under the title Sermons for the People. His aim he wrote was to impress the leading Christian truths and duties on the minds of his fellow citizens. He retired from his ministry at the end of July 1876.The Sydney Morning Herald 17 Jun 1876
Journalist & researcher While still a pastor, Greenwood had begun to write for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Echo.An evening paper and another Fairfax title (1875-1893).
This was the era before the byline credited the journalist, so it is difficult to identify articles by Greenwood. However, the Northern Star in Lismore referenced an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on Victorian educational progress ‘which some would at once attribute to his pen’.Northern Star 20 May 1876
This article ranged across the capital expenditure of the Victorian Government on State school buildings, the cost of some schools, the cost per pupil served (£5 per head), the school population, the transition from leased to owned schools, the number of acceptable quality school buildings in NSW, comparative attendance as a proportion of population, the amount that NSW would need to set aside to emulate Victoria, and the slow release of funds for schools in NSW (as opposed to the funding made available for roads).Sydney Morning Herald 3 May 1876
The content of the 3 May article matches the newspaper reports of Greenwood's education campaign speeches and is consistent with the assessment of his obituary writers.
The Mail described him as an expert in all social and political subjects that could be represented by figures with no rival in the Colonies. They said he had a special gift for statistics and for getting the meaning out of figures. He watched eagerly for the appearance of public documents, which he studied with patient enthusiasm, and compelled them to yield fresh and valuable results to the political thought of the country.‘Statistical returns of any kind had meanings for him that few other eyes discerned. Ministers and heads of departments feared the consummate skill and untiring energy which he brought to bear upon their reports. The banking corporations had in him the most competent critic they had yet encountered. Some of his statistical articles were revelations to many of those who read them. So he helped to educate many of our politicians. Protectionists, land monopolists, surplus-treasurers, and other jugglers with figures, had their carefully constructed balloons fatally pricked by his sharp and watchful pen.’The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser 11 Nov 1882 It was also said that many of the statistical returns issued by the Government had been greatly improved following his suggestions and that the inaugural role of Government statist would have been offered to him if he had wanted it.The Argus 14 Nov 1882, The Sydney Morning Herald 30 Nov 1882
Greenwood's public opponents claimed he was more than just a journalist on the staff of the SMH. The proposed Illawarra Railway was a campaign issue when Greenwood stood in the election of 1877. The Illawarra Mercury asserted 'Mr. Greenwood is intimately connected with the Sydney Morning Herald, if not at the very head of its editorial staff. On all occasions, and in every possible way, the Herald has opposed the Illawarra Railway, and will probably do so to the end, and if it should transpire that Mr. Greenwood will support the project while he is connected with that paper, it will be a matter for general surprise, and will greatly add to the high estimation in which he is now held by the people of this colony as a public man.'Illawarra Mercury 16 Nov 1877
In the 1882 electoral confrontation between Sir John Robertson and Greenwood over the seat of Mudgee, Robertson claimed that it was Greenwood's patrons at the SMH who had promised to bankroll Greenwood's campaign and that it was because the paper had withdrawn the promise of funding that Greenwood had to withdraw from the campaign ignominiously.Sydney Morning Herald 14 January 1882
That there might be something to these claims is suggested by the presence in the small group at Greenwood's funeral of the editor of the SMH Dr. Andrew Garran, (Editor 1873–1885) and Mr. E. Lewis Scott, the paper's dramatic and musical critic.The Sydney Morning Herald 2 October 1909
At least one article appeared under Greenwood's name – The Equality of the Sexes.Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser 10 January 1880 In which he argued for greater (though not complete) equality, opposing the views in Sir William Hamilton's Metaphysics and referencing John Stuart Mill. Must we for ever go on educating our daughters with no other hope but that in time somebody will come to marry them ? What a degradation of woman to make that her only prospect in life 1 Why not multiply the avenues of feminine industry and give our daughters as good chances of independence as our sons ? There is no need to make them rivals in the avocations of life, because nature has given them certain distinctive adaptations^; but, whatever a woman can do as well as a man, there is no reason in nature, and there ought to be no reason in social life, why she should not be as free as a man to do it. In the words of the Sydney Morning Herald. 'He was a man of great breadth and variety of knowledge, of extensive reading and patient research, and of scholarly tastes.'
Secular education campaigner 1874–1877 While pastor Greenwood became a prominent campaigner for National, Secular, Compulsory and Free education under the banner of the Public School League.
In NSW at that time many young people did not receive an education and most of those who were eduacated passed through the denominational schools (Anglican and Catholic). Fee-paying Government schools had been introduced in 1848. In 1866, Henry Parkes, then a Minister in the Martin Government introduced a Public Schools Act that placed denominational schools under State oversight. The 1866 Act sought through other measures, to stimulate the extension of government schooling to unserved areas. In this system, attendance was at the parent's discretion and government schools charged fees and were required to be self-supporting. The less well wealthy denominations such as Congregationalists and Baptists could not afford to establish their own denominational schools and the poor could not afford the fees. Nor did all parents permit their children to attend school.
The alternative model for which Greenwood and others campaigned was in operation in other parts of the world including Queensland and Victoria which in 1872, established a centralised model based on the principles of free, secular, and compulsory education.
On 18 June 1874, the educational reformers held their first meeting in the New Temperance Hall, on Pitt Street. (The Hall was directly opposite the Independent chapel, today the Pitt Street Uniting Church.) The meeting was chaired by the Mayor Stephen Goold. Greenwood, the main speaker, proposed the establishment of what became the New South Wales Public School League, for the advocacy of a national [NSW] system of education – secular, compulsory, and free. Greenwood called the current system a ‘cumbrous, uncertain, compromising, and controversy-creating system’ and said ‘what was wanted was a system of education which should reach every home in the country, a system at the lowest cost which should be fair and just to the school teachers, a system which should be impartially just to all sections of the community.'Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser 25 June 1874
There was a further preliminary meeting on 9 July again at the Temperance Hall. Of the 42 attendees whose names were recorded at that meeting, 3 held local government office, several were JPs or doctors and 15 were clergy. Greenwood spoke again, providing data on the schools systems in Queensland and the USA. He said in NSW ‘ 25,000 children [are] beyond the reach of our present educational appliances. Whoever had studied the matter must be convinced that this was the class most needing to be reached, and yet the class which would never be touched unless our system was made both compulsory and free’Sydney Morning Herald, 9 July 1874
On 17 August 1874 The League was formally established at a meeting at the Masonic Hall, 102 York Street. (The Masonic Hall occupied the old Town Hall opposite what today is the Queen Victoria Building). Greenwood spoke at length moving the first motion. 'That this meeting regards it as the duty of the State to secure a system of education for its people that shall be adequate, equitable, and available for all the children in the land.' He took his seat to prolonged and enthusiastic cheering. The motion was seconded by Rev Dr Barry who said we look to Greenwood as our leader in this matter. ‘The manner, in which he has mastered every detail, the labour with which he has got up his figures and his facts, and the admirable skill with which he has so disciplined and arrayed them are worthy of all praise.’Sydney Morning Herald 18 August 1874