By Greg Blood

SIR GEORGE HOUSTAIN REID,HOUSTAIN KCMG, KC

LIBERAL FREE TRADE PARTY

4th Prime Minister: 1904-1905

George Reid combined his political career in the New South Wales and federal parliaments with his time as president as NSW Cricket Association. He ceased his involvement with cricket administration by the time he became Australia’s fourth prime minister in 1904. Reid had a ‘Muscular Christianity’ view of sport emanating from Great Britain and how cricket was important in connecting the colonies to the motherland and empire. Reid with Edmund Barton, the first prime minister, took a leadership role in the development of organised sport in Australia.

Birth: 25 February 1845 – Johnstone, Renfrewshire, Scotland – Death: 12 September 1918, London, England

Major Political Appointments

• New South Wales Legislative Assembly Member for East Sydney: 14 December 1880 – 3 August 1884; 2 March 1887 – 3 August 1894; Member Sydney-King 3 August 1894 – 30 March 1901
• New South Wales Premier: 3 August 1894 – 13 September 1899
• New South Wales Minister for Public Instruction January 1883 -March 1884.
• Free Trade Party Leader: 18 November 1891 – 16 November 1908
• Federal Member for East Sydney:  29 March 1901 – 24 December 1909
• First Federal Leader of the Opposition: 1901-1904.
• Prime Minister and Minister for External Affairs: 18 August 1904 – 5 July 1905.
•  Australia’s first High Commissioner to the UK: 1 January 1910 – 1 January 1916
• House of Commons Member for St George’s, Hanover Square: 11 January 1916 – 12 September 1918.

Background

Reid was born in Renfrewshire, Scotland and his father wasRev. John Reid, Presbyterian minister. He was the fifth of seven children. His family moved to Melbourne in May 1852, where he attended Melbourne Academy (later Scotch College). In 1858, the family moved to Sydney when his father joined John Dunmore Lang at Scots Church. At the age of thirteen, he became a junior clerk in a merchant’s counting-house and in 1864 became an assistant accountant in the Colonial Treasury. At fifteen, he was a member of the School of Arts Debating Society. He joined the NSW Treasury at the age of nineteen and progressed to chief branch clerk. By 1878, George Reid was Attorney-General’s department secretary-general. On 19 September 1879, Reid qualified as a barrister after several years of study.

From November 1880 to February 1884, he was the Member of East Sydney in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly.  He was absent from the Legislative Assembly between February 1884 to November 1885 after losing his seat. He went on to hold the seats of East Sydney and Sydney King until March 1901 when he resigned to enter federal parliament. In September 1891, he replaced Henry Parkes as leader of the Free Trade Party and became leader of the opposition. Reid was the New South Wales premier from August 1894 to September 1899.

Reid supported the federation but in 1898 he had reservations in the proposed Constitution. In first federal election in 1901 he was elected the member for East Sydney and became the first federal opposition leader leading the Liberal Free Trade  party. Reid became Australia’s fourth prime minister in 1904 when the Watson Government resigned after it lost a vote on an amendment to the Conciliation and Arbitration Bill. Reid Liberal Free Trade party did not have a majority and was voted out in 1905 when the Protectionist and Labor parties reunited to vote out his government leading to Alfred Deakin becoming prime minister for the second time. He was leader of the opposition until December 1908 and resigned from federal parliament on 24 December 1909. He was appointed Australia’s first High Commissioner to London in 1910 and left on 1 January 1916 when his appointment ended. On on11 January 1916, he was elected unopposed to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom for the seat of St George, Hanover Square as a Unionist candidate.

Reid married Flora Brumby in 1891, and they had three children. He died suddenly on 12 September 1918 in London, England.[1]

From 1866 to 1904, Reid wad significantly involved in cricket administration in NSW. Cricket was a dominant sport in the colony and Reid’s association most likely assisted his profile in the NSW colony.

Sport

Reid’s foreword to Gordon Inglis 1912 book Sport and Pastime in Australia outlined his view on the value of sport[2]:

Properly regulated sport is a healthy feature of national life. The true sportsman learns to obey, to exercise self-control, to subordinate self-interest. He is none the less, rather the more, a good citizen when he recognises that the proper exercise of the body is essential to the proper working of the mind”

This was ‘Muscular Christianity’ view of sport, a common view with those of British heritage.

Headon’s extensive biography highlighted that Reid had dual loyalties to the colony and to the Empire.[3] The development of cricket played an important role in connecting the colony to the Empire.

Cricket

Reid had an early interest in cricket and was a member of the Warwick Cricket Club. In a speech at Victor Trumper’s farewell in 1909, Reid acknowledged he was not a good cricketer:

He said he was a very old cricketer himself, but he had to confess that he was a very much better cricketer in the pavilion than in the field. He thought a batsman’s chances would be very much improved if he could have two lives—in the first innings, at any rate. He once got by accident into the first eleven of the old Warwick Club in a match played at Richmond. They only had ten men, and he was put out through some mistake of the umpire, but the opposing team allowed him to bat again, and he pulled off the match by scoring 30 runs, and he would have been going yet only the match was won.[4]

There is a published scorecard of the third grade match Albert v Warwick on Saturday 18 November 1865 at Toxteth Ground, Glebe Point Rd.[5] It highlighted that as a twenty year old he was an opening bat and bowler.

In 1866, at the age of twenty one, Reid was appointed as the Club’s delegate to the newly established New South Wales Cricket Association (NSWCA) and was Treasurer from 1875 to 1876. [6] This was during the period that sport in Australia had become more organised with the establishment of associations and clubs to manage competitions.

 In October 1878, Reid seconded a NSWCA motion that congratulated the Australian cricket team’s success in England, Scotland and Wales. The team led by Dave Gregory played forty two matches including fifteen first-class matches – seven wins, four losses and four draws.  The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Reid stated:  

he beneficial effects of the visit of the Anglo-Australian team in England could not be over-estimated, as it had tended to show that the national characteristics of the parent stock had not degenerated when transplanted to the Southern Hemisphere. [7]

This view from Reid was challenged by two cricket matches in 1879.

The tour by English team led by Lord Harris in 1879 resulted in two controversial matches. The first match in February 1879 at the Association Ground (later Sydney Cricket Ground) is referred to as the Sydney Riot 1879. NSW team was captained by Dave Gregory and English XI by Lord Harris. The appointed umpires were Edmund Barton by NSW and twenty-two year old Victorian George Coulthard by Harris. Late on the second day, Coulthard controversially upheld the runout appeal of test cricketer Billy Murdoch for 82. This decision with the NSW following on from the first inning by 90 put the English XI in a strong position. NSW captain Dave Gregory disputed the decision and refused to send out another batsman until the decision was reversed. This led to a crowed invasion and jostling of the English players, but no one was seriously harmed. After the crowd departed the field, Gregory demanded that Coulthard be replaced before sending out a new batsman, but Harris refused and called on to award the match to his side on a forfeit. Barton successfully negotiated with Gregory to return to play.   The English XI went on to by an innings and 41 runs. The match led to bad blood between both teams. NSWCA president, Sir George Innes issued an apology to Harris for the embarrassing spectacle, ‘a most humble apology’ we are told, which was ‘graciously’ accepted. However, Reid and others were upset by Harris’ published remarks following the match.

Following the Sydney Riot match, English team returned to Melbourne to play against a Victorian team captained by test player Harry Boyle. The match resulted in controversy after Harris reneged on the agreement with Boyle to play an extra 30 minutes with English XI needing 54 runs for victory but when English XI collapsed to 3-15, Harris ‘demanded that stumps be drawn immediately’ with the excuse that they had a banquet that evening at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Boyle was disgusted with Harris reversed decision and with other Victorian players refused to attend the banquet.[8] In a speech at the banquet, Harris spoke about the ‘Sydney Riot’ in relation to how his team were unfairly treated by the NSW press, the Sydney police for taking things easy and Reid accusing him “using his elbows in a crowd”.[9]

Harris’ letter published on 1 April 1879 in London’s Daily Telegraph [10]  and subsequent article in The Argus that it:

 “plainly accuses the Australians of ingratitude, discourtesy, and want of hospitality. Our cricketers are described as being good winners but bad losers, and as being treacherous in their conduct. The sporting newspapers, which seem to have been glad of an excuse for attacking Australian cricketers and Australian colonists, have descended to coarse abuse, which most Englishmen must have been ashamed to read.”[11]

As a result of the letter, the NSWCA held a special meeting on 4 June 1879 to discuss the contents of the letter. Reid seconded the resolution:

In the opinion of this Association, the letter of Lord Harris, published in the London Daily Telegraph of 1st April, in reference to the lamentable disturbance which occurred during the last match with his Lordship’s Eleven in Sydney, is both inaccurate and ungenerous. [12]

Reid comments at the meeting were reported in The Sydney Morning Herald:[13]  ’

He (Mr. Reid) had slight doubt that this lamentable disturbance, and the still more lamentable account Lord Harris gave of it, had exposed the community to many unfair reflections in the mother country. At so great a distance from England, they were very much at the mercy of supercilious and superficial tourists such as Lord Harris; but men of party who had travelled the colonies had admitted that the colonists were not unworthy of their British origin, and some had regarded this, the ” Mother colony of the Australias, as the most thoroughly English- of them all.

Some might condemn, but he rejoiced in the zeal with which their young men pursued the sports of Old England. They enjoyed the blessings of free institutions in a land of plenty, but he regarded as of far more importance in any calculation of future greatness, the ‘manly and generous qualities which had come to them in the Anglo-Saxon blood, and which could not be cultivated in a more popular form than amid the healthy and innocent rivalries engendered by the traditional sports of Englishmen, at the head of which stood the noble game of cricket.

These comments reflected Reid’s view that by adopting cricket, it played an important role in maintaining the Anglo-Saxon heritage in the colony but Harris stating questioning this development.

Reid was NSWCA president from 1891 to 1904 and in 1891 was nominated as a delegate to the prestigious Australian Cricket Council on 13 September 1892 but he declined the honour, citing ‘pressure of political duties’.[14]

Reid was appointed as a Trustee of the Sydney Cricket Ground on 12 November 1897 due to his position as president of the NSWCA. [15] He resigned as president in 1904. The NSWCA assumed Reid would also stand down as a Trustee (to be replaced by the new NSWCA president, William Trickett) but he did not do so until 30 August 1905.[16]

Rowing

He was present in London when the Sydney Rowing Club won 1912 Henley regatta on their way to representing Australasia at the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games. At a dinner for the departing team, it was reported that that Reid “was at one time an oarsman” and “there were one or two present who remembered him in that role. It transpired, however, that the present Commonwealth representative did not row very much, but he was associated with rowing men very considerably.”[17]

In 1913, The Sunday Times reflected on Reid’s time as High Commissioner in London:[18]

Sir George Reid was a cricket enthusiast when a young man. Now he is content to watch the game while enjoying, a comfortable seat. The High Commissioner, counts rowing among his favorite sports That is to say, he likes to see others rowing.  He gets most gets most of his exercise out of walking. He is happy when he has a good book to read and a cosy armchair to rest in”

Conclusion

An obituary to Reid in The Referee in 1918 was critical of Reid’s decision remained NSWCA president for over ten years and his political roles.[19] 

Armstrong’s comprehensive two volume history of the Sydney Cricket Grouind detailed the strong links between NSW politicians and cricket administration. Reid was able to combine both despite being the NSW premier and involved in the move towards federation in 1901. Reid frequently interacted with Edmund Barton, Australia’s first prime minister, in the early years of the NSWCA. They were leaders in the development of sport in Australia.

References

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[1]  Online biographies – Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Archives of Australia, National Museum of Australia

[2] Gordon Inglis, Sport and Pastime in Australia. London, Methuen, 1912

[3] David Headon, George Houstoun Reid (1845–1918): Australia’s fourth Prime Minister : (1845–1918): Forgotten Founder, Canberra, Parliamentary Library, 2020, p.23

[4] Mr. G. H. Reid On Cricket, The Express and Telegraph (Adelaide, SA), 16 March 1909, p. 1.  

[5] Cricket,  The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 November 1865, p.

[6] NSW Cricket Association Office-Bearers, NSW Cricket Association website

[7] Association, The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 October 1878, p. 5 (NSW : 1842 – 1954), p. 5

[8] The Cricket Dispute in Melbourne. Evening News (Sydney, NSW), 10 March 1879, p. 2

[9] Geoff Armstroing, A Thing of Beauty: The Founding of the Sydney Cricket Ground, Vol. 1 1851-1890. Sydney, Stoke Hill Press, 2025, p.  112

[10] Lord Harris letter can found at the  website

[11] Saturday, May 31, 1879, The Argus (Melbourne, Vic),  31 May 1879, p. 6

[12] Lord Harris’s Letter—Meeting Of The Cricket Association. The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 June 1879, p. 6.

[13]Lord Harris Letter, p. 6

[14] Geoff Armstroing, A Thing of Beauty: The Founding of the Sydney Cricket Ground, Vol. 21 1891-1898. Sydney, Stoke Hill Press, 2025, p. 68

[15] Armstrong, Vol 2, p. 307

[16] Correspondence with Geoff Armstrong.

[17]Olympic Games, The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 April 1912, p.

[18] 1913 ‘Some Distinguished Australians’, Sunday Times (Sydney, NSW), 26 January 1913. p. 22

[19] Sir George Reid’s Death. Referee (Sydney, NSW), 18 September 1918, p.9

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