Walter Baldwin Spencer

Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer was a prominent British-Australian scientist. He worked as an evolutionary biologist, an anthropologist, and an ethnologist. An evolutionary biologist studies how living things change over time. An anthropologist and ethnologist study human cultures and how people live. Spencer was a major figure in the scientific community of his time. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1900. He was also knighted in 1916 for his contributions. He held the title of Emeritus Professor at the University of Melbourne until he died in 1929.

Spencer’s academic journey began in England. He was born on June 23, 1860, in Stretford, Lancashire. He studied at the Manchester School of Art, where he learned drawing. In 1879, he began studying at Owens College, now the University of Manchester. This is where he first became interested in evolutionary biology. He later moved to the University of Oxford. In 1884, he earned a BA in biology with first-class honours. While at Oxford, he attended lectures by the anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor. These lectures sparked his lifelong interest in human cultures. He also helped move the General Pitt-Rivers collection of anthropological artefacts to a new museum at Oxford.

Much of Spencer's career involved fieldwork in Central Australia. He collaborated closely with Frank Gillen to study the Aranda people, who are now often called the Arrernte. Spencer also worked with several assistants and correspondents. He was assisted by an artist and interpreter named Jim Kite, also known as Erlikilyika. He also had a long correspondence with Patrick "Pado" Byrne. Byrne was a telegraph master at Charlotte Waters who collected biological specimens. Spencer honored Byrne by naming a small marsupial the kowari after him. The scientific name for this animal is Dasyuroides byrnei.

Spencer’s views on Indigenous Australians were controversial and are viewed critically today. While he was considered a kindly humanitarian in his personal practice, his theories were different. He viewed Aboriginal people as "survivals" from an early stage of social development. This perspective led him to make unacceptable value judgments. He held a pessimistic view that these cultures were in decline. This put him in direct conflict with missionary Carl Strehlow. Strehlow believed the Aranda people were creative and had a future. Strehlow was a fluent speaker of local languages, whereas Spencer and Gillen had limited language competence. This difference in language skill affected how they gathered information.

These differing views caused a major debate among British anthropologists. Spencer and Gillen published a book in 1899 called The Native Tribes of Central Australia. In 1904, they described the Aranda as "naked savages" who did not understand their own songs. Carl Strehlow challenged these findings in his own work, Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien. This sparked a controversy involving many scientists, including Andrew Lang and Sir James Frazer. The debate was about whether Aboriginal people were primitive or if they were a people whose culture had previously been higher. Spencer even wrote angry and defamatory letters to other scientists regarding Strehlow's work.

In 1913, Spencer served as a Special Commissioner and Chief Protector. During this time, he proposed a very difficult plan for Aboriginal children. He suggested taking children away from their parents to live on reserves. He believed this was necessary because he thought children living in the bush would be unable to live in modern society. He wanted them to be trained in "habits of industry." He specifically wanted to ensure that "half-caste" children had no contact with camp life. However, his plan was not fully implemented. The Administrator of the Northern Territory, John A. Gilruth, visited the Hermannsburg Mission and decided it should remain.

Spencer was also active in the world of Australian sports. He served as the President of the Melbourne University Sports Union. Later, he was the President of the Victorian Football League from 1919 to 1925. His scientific legacy is also found in the names of animals. Two species of Australian lizards are named after him: Pseudemoia spenceri and Varanus spenceri. In 2009, a project began to digitize the original Spencer and Gillen collections to preserve them for the future.

Spencer’s life ended during a scientific expedition. He was traveling in Tierra del Fuego, which is in Chile and Argentina. He died from heart failure on July 14, 1929. His final journey was recorded in his own journals and the writings of his assistant, Jean Hamilton. He was buried in Magallanes, Chile. Today, the Baldwin Spencer Building at the University of Melbourne stands as a memorial to his work. It was listed on the Victorian Heritage Register in 1992.