Mitchell Reading Room [Explore]

The World Press Photo exhibition is on for the next couple of months at the Mitchell Library, the big sandstone monolith at the corner of Sydney's Macquarie St and Sir John Young Crescent. This is the reading room!

 

The Mitchell Library takes its name from David Mitchell, a lifelong book collector, who in 1898 offered to bequeath his priceless collection of Australiana to the library trustees, which they received on his passing in 1907 with a £70,000 endowment for its maintenance.

 

Mitchell was one of the first undergraduates of the University of Sydney, winning scholarships in mathematics, and was admitted to the Bar in 1858 although he never practised. Money from his father's estate enabled him to buy a seven room house for £5,000 at 17 Darlinghurst Road (next to Llankelly Place in Kings Cross) in 1871, the same year as the death of his mother. Although considered a 'witty and wise' conversationalist he was unmarried and a voracious reader with an obsession to 'gather a copy of every document related to Australia'. This amassed '30,000 volumes, prints, engravings and pictures...to enable future historians to write the history of Australia in general, and New South Wales in particular.' The collection was his legacy.

 

He was a man of independent means as his father, James Mitchell, had been a surgeon who served in the Napoleonic wars before being posted to Sydney Hospital in 1823. Continuing to practice, he invested in Hunter Valley properties including the Burwood and Rothbury estates, operating small coal mines with James and Alexander Brown, among others, who he had brought with him to the colony. A respected businessman, he was a foundation member of the Sydney Banking Co., served in the 1840s as a director of the Hunter River Steam Navigation Co. and became chairman of the Australian Gaslight Co (AGL). He had a long association with the Australian Subscription Library, now the State Library of New South Wales, initially as a committeeman and later chairman, a position he held when he passed in 1869.

 

James Mitchell's will was contested by the family. In 1865 he had fallen under the influence of a confidence man, William Wolfskehl. Mitchell was Wolfskehl's guarantor for a smelting operation, but when the company failed Mitchell had to pay Wolfskehl's share. However, when Mitchell died in 1869, a will made just before his death named Wolfskehl sole executor of his estate. The Mitchell family contested the will in the Supreme Court claiming undue influence, eventually upheld in favour of an earlier will.

Done