‘The Australian Jubilee Peerage: A Detailed Scheme for the Institution of Various Long-Needed Australian Orders of Nobility’, The Bulletin, 25 June 1887

‘The Australian Jubilee Peerage: A Detailed Scheme for the Institution of Various Long-Needed Australian Orders of Nobility’, The Bulletin, 25 June 1887

‘pedigree hunting,’ Australian politics, Britain, heraldry, honours, Jubilee, knight, knighthood, Livingston York Hopkins (1846-1927), Melbourne, nobility, peerage, politics, political figures, Queen Victoria, social mobility, Victoria, VIC, White Knight of Kerry

This full-page illustration by the Bulletin’s American-born cartoonist Livingston Hopkins (aka ‘Hop’), pokes fun at some of Australia’s prominent political figures. The 25 June 1887 issue of the Bulletin reviewed Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, and Hop’s cartoon “lampooned the jubilee peerages that had been bestowed” on the distant British outpost (Louise D'Arcens, Old Songs in the Timeless Land: Medievalism in Australian Literature 1840-1910, Turnhout: Brepols, 2011, p.21). It seems that Australians from all backgrounds and social milieu desired these honours from the British monarch: a search for long-forgotten (aka ‘illustrious’) forbears was relentlessly pursued by public figures, and the claiming of heraldic devices (if obtainable) was de rigueur. As a result, Burke’s Peerage was forced to devote two volumes in 1891 and 1895 to “Colonial Gentry” (D'Arcens, p.24). Hop’s cartoon offered Bulletin readers a tongue-in-cheek selection of new honours, including ‘The Order of P.G.’ to be “conferred only upon the old and true colonial aristocracy” (Bulletin,p .18). “P.G.” is a reference to “the convict inmates of Pinchgut, the notoriously punitive prison-island in Sydney Cove (better known today as Fort Denison)”. It also serves as a timely reminder to those with ‘blinkered’ memories “of the decidedly ignoble origins” of many of the Colony’s original European settlers (D’Arcens, p.23).

Livingston Hopkins ('Hop')

The Bulletin

The Bulletin

25 June 1887 (p. 18).

Public Domain

Journal (Microfilm)

Journal (Microfilm)