Former
Speakers
Sir Matthew Henry Davies
1850-1912
Speaker: 1887-1892
Legislative Assembly: 1883-1892
The first Australian-born Speaker was the son of a Director of the Geelong and Melbourne Railway Co., and was himself born at Geelong. Matthew Davies was admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court in April 1875 and established his own practice. Davies began speculating in land himself and by 1887 had established about forty land companies.
In 1881-82 Davies was mayor of Prahran, and he sat in the Legislative Assembly as the Member for St. Kilda in 1883-88 and Toorak in 1889-92. He was a Minister without portfolio in the Gillies government in 1886-87, and sat on commissions of inquiry on land titles and banking. In 1887 he was elected Speaker, and conducted Assembly business with skill and impartiality. He was knighted in 1890, when he was already well known for his philanthropic activities.
Davies' fortunes, like many others, declined in the 1890s depression. In March 1892 the Mercantile Bank of Australia, which he had established in 1885, suspended payment on a dividend it had declared; Davies resigned from parliament in April and travelled to England, where he failed to placate the Bank's depositors and shareholders. On his return to Melbourne he found that most of his other companies were in difficulty, and in January 1893 he was committed for trial for conspiracy to defraud by means of a false balance sheet. The charges were withdrawn by the Attorney General, Sir Bryan O'Loghlen, before the trial ended, but the Solicitor General, Isaac Isaacs, issued new writs, and Davies stood trial and was acquitted, but became bankrupt in 1894. He had liabilities of £280,000, assets which were reputed to be £650,000 in 1890 had gone, and all his companies disappeared at a cost of over £4,000,000 to the public.
Davies returned to his legal practice and was later Honorary Secretary of the Law Institute of Victoria, Deputy Grand Master of Freemasons and President of the Philharmonic Society. He stood for but did not win the seat of Melbourne in 1900.
Davies was married twice, to Elizabeth Locke Mercer in 1875, and later to Margaret Boyle. When he died at Mentone in 1912 he was survived by his second wife, and by two sons and four daughters.