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KNOX, Sir GEORGE HODGES (1885-1960), orchardist, soldier and politician, was born on 17 December 1885 at Prahran, Melbourne, eldest son of William Knox and his wife Catherine Mary, née McMurtrie. (Sir) Robert Knox was a brother. Educated at Scotch College and the Working Men's College, George was employed as an electrical engineer and spent two years in Manchester, England. Returning to Victoria, he married Kathleen Purves MacPherson on 4 February 1909 at Christ Church, South Yarra, and became an orchardist at Beaconsfield.
In May 1909 Knox was commissioned lieutenant in the Australian Volunteer Automobile Corps; in November he transferred as second lieutenant to the 1st Battalion, Victorian Scottish Regiment, and after promotion to captain moved to the 52nd Infantry Regiment in 1912. Appointed captain in the 23rd Battalion, Australian Imperial Force, on 29 March 1915 and major on 1 April, he commanded the battalion from August at Gallipoli and in Egypt and France with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In July 1916 he was blown up at Hardecourt and evacuated to England where in November he took charge of No.1 Command Depot. Twice mentioned in dispatches, he was appointed C.M.G. in 1917. He returned to Melbourne in April 1918 and his A.I.F. appointment was terminated.
Knox's brother William Johnstone, who served with the 3rd Field Artillery Brigade, A.I.F. and was awarded the Military Cross, died of wounds in 1917. Another brother in the A.I.F., MacGregor, who was also awarded the Military Cross, was permanently incapacitated.
In April 1918 Knox was appointed aide-de-camp to the governor of Victoria and in November was given temporary command of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, Australian Military Forces. He spent August 1919 to February 1920 overseas on special service as lieutenant-colonel, A.I.F., after which he settled on his new property Greenlaw at Ferntree Gully. He had been divorced in June 1919 and on 19 August 1921 at Malvern Presbyterian Church he married Ada Victoria Harris.
Knox continued his army career, his concern for his men making him a popular leader. He was lieutenant-colonel commanding the 48th Battalion from March 1921 and the 52nd Battalion in 1922-27. In 1939 he was appointed commander of the 5th Battalion and next year was temporary colonel commanding the 2nd Infantry Brigade. Promoted temporary brigadier in 1941, he had charge of the Queenscliff-Nepean Covering Force in March-August 1942 when he retired with the rank of honorary brigadier.
Late in 1918 Knox had been an unsuccessful Nationalist candidate at a by-election for the Federal seat of Corangamite. Five years later he was elected to the Ferntree Gully Shire Council and in 1927 he won the Legislative Assembly seat of Upper Yarra for the Nationalists. A diligent local member, he was unopposed in 1929-40; from 1945 until his death he represented Scoresby. In 1928 Knox carried a motion directing the assembly to open its sittings with the Lord's Prayer. (His father had persuaded the Federal parliament to adopt this procedure in 1901). Knox was secretary to cabinet in the McPherson ministry of 1929 and that year served on a royal commission into the dairying industry. In December 1929 and in March-April 1935 he was honorary minister in the McPherson and Argyle governments respectively, but in 1936-37 as one of the Liberal-Country Party faction in the United Australia Party he was critical of Argyle's leadership.
Knox was an effective and impartial Speaker in 1942-47 and was knighted in 1945. Throughout 1947 he was pressed by the Liberal Party to resign the Speakership and support a no confidence motion against the vulnerable Cain ministry. He refused, maintaining that the Speaker should be above party politics; he disapproved of the refusal of supply in October. In later years he persistently advocated the use of simple language in the drafting of legislation.
Described as 'tall, broad-shouldered with rugged features', Knox was admired for his integrity and kindness. He was president of the Melbourne Hunt Polo Club and a life member of the Polo Association of Victoria. He was an honorary forest officer and inspector of fisheries and native game in Victoria.
Lady Knox was an active philanthropist. Chief among her interests was the Australian Red Cross Society with which she was associated for over forty years. She was a life governor of the Eye and Ear Hospital and also worked for the St John Ambulance Association, the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind, the Good Neighbour Council, the Girl Guides' Association and mental hospitals. She was appointed C.B.E. in 1961 for social welfare services in the Ferntree Gully area.
Sir George died of coronary vascular disease on 11 July 1960 at Ferntree Gully and was cremated after a state funeral. He was survived by his wife and by a son from both marriages, a daughter of his first marriage having predeceased him. His estate was valued for probate at £40,741. The city of Knox commemorates his name.¹⁹

WOODS, JOHN (1822-1892), engineer, politician and inventor, was born on 5 November 1822 at Liverpool, England, son of Richard Woods, railwayman, and his wife Mary, née Cave. Educated locally, he trained as a locomotive engineer in Liverpool and then on the Leipzig and Dresden railway. He worked in North America and held positions in railway and iron works in Staffordshire and Lancashire, where he was active in anti-corn-law agitation. He won first prize for railway axles at the 1851 Great Exhibition. At Liverpool, aged 21, he married Sarah Gibbons.
With his wife Woods arrived in Victoria in 1852 and went to the goldfields. He first 'mounted the stump' at the Goulburn diggings to lead passive resistance to the licence fee. He became president of the Ararat branch of the Land Convention and was active in the registration of electors and in obtaining sufficient ballot papers for the 1858 election. At Ararat he was elected to the local court and then to the Mining Board and was a delegate to the 1859 Mining Board Conference. Partnership in a deep wet claim left him penniless; he took employment at Stawell, building the St George's crushing plant.
From October 1859 until his defeat in 1864 Woods was member for the Legislative Assembly seat of Crowlands. On 30 October 1865 he was appointed engineer and surveyor for the Victorian Water Supply at a salary of £300. He worked on the Malmesbury reservoir until summarily dismissed by (Sir) James McCulloch's government on a charge of knowingly accepting faulty pipes and tarring over the cracks. The accusation and dismissal were later privately acknowledged as unfair. Woods represented Crowlands again in 1871-77 and in 1877-92 the new electorate of Stawell. He was commissioner of railways and roads and vice-president of the Board of Lands and Works in (Sir) Graham Berry's governments of 1875 and 1877-80. He sat on many select committees, mainly about railways, and was also a member of several royal commissions including those on the tariff (1881-83), employees in shops (1882-84) and coal (1889-91). He was a commissioner for the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition and an honorary commissioner to the 1883-84 Calcutta Exhibition; from 1890 he was a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railways.
A consistent, active proponent of democratic and radical principles and a staunch local member, Woods worked hard for the interests of miners and small settlers. He advocated a non-legalistic approach to mining on private property and a sliding scale of gold royalties to replace rents for mining land. He steadfastly put forward the Land Convention programme, always opposing permanent alienation of crown land and sale by auction, and proposing, in 1859, 1864 and 1873, a progressive land tax to 'burst up the great estates'; he published pamphlets on the subject in 1873 and 1880. As minister, his overriding interest was to reduce costs to small farmers, a political priority opposed by senior officials. He initiated great railway activity: a major branch line along the Goulburn Valley, the Melbourne-Oakleigh connexion and two north-western extensions into the Wimmera. He reformed the goods tariff to reduce freight charges and levelled and reorganized the Spencer Street yards; but his plans to build a block of grain and wool sheds and a new dock to reduce farmers' storage and cartage costs were cancelled by the next government.
A strong protectionist, Woods championed local industry, thereby opposing T. Higinbotham, on the use of Victorian-built locomotives. Among his several inventions were a fast stone-breaking machine (patented 1860) and an important and successful hydraulic railway brake (1882) which was used on many Victorian lines. He had set up a company in December 1877 to register the patent and manufacture his invention but air-powered brakes dominated eventually.
Although a member of the Chamber of Manufactures, Woods was always proud of his artisan background and claimed to be a representative of labour: 'I graduated in a hard school … I had to work my ten hours a day in England for very little money, and I know exactly what it means; and I know the advantages which have been obtained in this colony by labour in combination'. However he opposed political representation of trade unionists as such. He fought for the eight-hour principle and argued for unemployment relief and old-age pensions. In a major article, 'Wages', in the Victorian Review (1880), he raised the problem of ensuring for a worker a fair share in the profits of industry, not merely a day's pay. After 1880 he became a liberal oppositionist to the James Service-Berry coalition and subsequent ministries.
Deakin first met Woods in 1879, 'his rotund form, snub nose, glistening eyes and spiky hair rendering him a rather Socrates-Silenus appearance'; he described him as a serious reader and a man of original mind and initiative. However Woods never attained high parliamentary stature. His radical ideas, heterodox opinions and abrasive approach offended the community's respectable conformism. Impetuous and unconventional in his actions, he sometimes had to apologize for 'taking intoxicants too freely' and wrote amorous doggerel which Punch would not publish. He was a vigorous speaker with a gift for phrase-making. Deakin, however, claimed that he lacked industry and self-control. He lent his name to some of James Munro's more questionable promotions and with L. L. Smith 'puffed' a tin mine on the London market. Attacked by the conservative press, the nickname 'Tarbrush' followed him everywhere.
Woods's first wife died, aged 74, on 12 January 1888 and on 23 September 1891 he married a divorcee, Jessica Muir, née Whitley. He died of heart disease, dropsy and gangrene on 2 April 1892 at Brighton. Survived by his second wife and two of his four daughters, and predeceased by his two sons, he was buried in the Boroondara cemetery according to the rites of the Anglican Church.¹⁰

BOSISTO, JOSEPH (1824-1898), chemist and parliamentarian, was born on 21 March 1824 at Leeds, England, son of William Bosisto and his wife Maria, née Lazenby, both of Huguenot extraction. As a child he lived in Yorkshire and Surrey, left school in 1839, was apprenticed to a druggist and gained certificates in 1847 from the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain which later made him an honorary member. Engaged by F. H. Faulding of Adelaide he sailed in the Competitor in June 1848. Soon after arrival he met Ferdinand Mueller; their friendship lasted nearly fifty years. In 1851 he went to the Forest Creek goldfields where he seems to have spent more time examining local flora than digging for gold. In 1852 he returned to Adelaide and married Eliza Johnston. They settled at Richmond, Victoria, where in a renovated hotel stable he soon had a prosperous pharmacy and was consulted as 'Doctor' Bosisto.
His decoctions of eucalyptus oil used in a variety of medicinal products were to make Bosisto a household name. His first stills were near Dandenong but his search for suitable leaves led him far afield. He was not the first to distil eucalyptus oil, for Surgeons John White, Dennis Considen and Robert Officer had done so long before 1853, but Bosisto was probably first to make it commercially and to win repute for manufacturing Australia's first 'original' product. The parrot on the yellow label was his most famous trademark, familiar to every valetudinarian. His 'Syrup of Red Gum' was advertised as having a 'delicate mucilaginous astringency [that] renders it effectual in all affections of the mucous membrane of the Stomach and Bowels, inducing a feeling of repose and tranquility'. His products were known in Britain by 1865 and later in Europe, India and South Africa. In 1882 he became a partner of Felton & Grimwade and in 1885 his original firm became their subsidiary. When Bosisto had financial difficulties in 1889 he mortgaged his share to his partners.
Bosisto was no huckster or quack but an earnest man of science with an eye for business. He was a founder of the Pharmaceutical Society of Victoria in 1857 and later its president and co-editor of its Journal. In 1858 he joined the Royal Society of Victoria and was later a councillor, publishing extensively in its Proceedings. His writings were notable for their expertise and lucidity, and reveal a questioning mind. Affirming that the eucalypt was a 'Fever Destroying Tree', he credited it with 'an active agency' superior to that in vegetation of other countries, affecting even virulent fever so that it 'dies at its opening day'; without this 'happy and benign influence [which exists] independent of ourselves, we might mourn our fate'. Bosisto's lecturing style was also popular and allusive: his subject of 'Perfume Plants' easily led him to the 'Song of Songs' and Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination. His reports from the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886 in London were almost Benthamite, emphasizing the training of artisans and the need for Australians to study scientifically the growing of silk, vines, tobacco, etc. Some fifty medals from international exhibitions and a C.M.G. conferred at Osborne House in 1886 testify to his repute.
Known to his friends as 'Bos', he was kindly, dignified and committed to public service. At Richmond he served for twelve years on the Municipal Council and was mayor in 1865-67. As chairman of the bench for six years he was noted for his impartiality and patience. He represented Richmond in the Legislative Assembly in 1874 until defeated in 1889; according to the Richmond Guardian, he had become too remote from his electoral committees and constituents, and his age fitted him more for the Legislative Council. After electorates were realigned he represented Jolimont and West Richmond in 1892-94. More didactic than forceful, his parliamentary speeches show him to be instinctively moderate and uncertainly conservative. Although a free trader in principle, he upheld a moderate tariff because it was the settled policy of the colony and helped infant industries. Priding himself on integrity and independence, he deprecated mere obstruction and tended to vote with governments which tried to fulfil electoral promises. He believed in universal suffrage but also in the dual vote. He opposed payment of members yet claimed, amid the ironical cheers of Richmond electors, to be a friend of the working man and an opponent of class legislation. Staunchly adherent to the status quo, he claimed that female suffrage would cause domestic unhappiness and defended imprisonment for debt. In 1894 he advocated an increased property tax but opposed income tax and voted against the Patterson government which he had helped to form. The highlight of his parliamentary career was his pharmacy bill, introduced in 1876 with lucid and painstaking explanations. He also helped to establish the College of Pharmacy and to limit the sale of poisons to druggists and doctors. He was chairman of the Technological Commission and claimed that a university chair of pharmacy would be far more valuable than one of comparative philology.
Bosisto lost heavily in the building society crashes and spent his last years in straitened circumstances. Modest and genial, he still wore the frilled shirts which were going out of fashion when he left England. The Bulletin, 17 October 1896, noted that he 'embarks joyously in perfume manufacturing on his Wimmera farm'. He was predeceased by his wife; they had no children. He died aged 74 in Richmond on 8 November 1898 and was buried in the Anglican section of Boroondara cemetery. He left a deficit of £56 and a request for no flowers.¹⁹