James Frederick Palmer

Sir James Frederick Palmer (7 June 1803 to 23 April 1871) was an English-born medical practitioner who became a pioneer of colonial Victoria. Born at Great Torrington in Devonshire, the fourth son of the Reverend John Palmer, he trained in medicine, practised in London and was a surgeon at St Thomas's Hospital; in 1824 he became a house surgeon at St George's Hospital. Between 1835 and 1837 he edited the four-volume Works of the anatomist John Hunter, and he supplied the glossary to A Dialogue in the Devonshire Dialect, published in 1837. After failing to secure two surgical appointments he migrated to Melbourne, arriving at the end of September 1840. There he became an early member of the Melbourne City Council and was elected Mayor of Melbourne in 1845, and in 1848 he was elected for the Port Phillip District to the New South Wales Legislative Council. He later became the first President of the Victorian Legislative Council and died at his estate, Burwood, in Hawthorn, Melbourne, in 1871.