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Great Australians you should know: George Adams

Apr 23, 2017

Everyone knows George Adams, don’t they? Yes…? No…? Not Sure…? I may be wrong then in my assumption, but I’m sure you’ll know exactly who I mean before long.

George was the son of poor farm labourers, William and Sarah Adams, born at Redhill in Hertfordshire in 1839. The family emigrated, landing at Sydney’s Circular Quay in May 1855. The young George set out to make a living, heading first to the Queensland goldfields before moving out to western New South Wales where he worked as a stockman and then stock agent and coach driver. Later, he established himself as a butcher in Goulburn.

George proved himself industrious and possessed of a good business head. With hard work and good returns, he was to become what some consider one of the country’s first true entrepreneurs, selling the butchery and buying the licence of the Steam Packet Hotel at Kiama. At the same time, he became part owner of the Wellington sheep station.

Annual visits to the Royal Show and other regular trips to race meetings saw him frequent O’Brien’s Hotel in Pitt Street, site of the modern day Hilton. It was here the Tattersall’s Club originated, George introduced to the ‘Foundation Forty’. They were businessmen and punters who established a private sweepstakes operation on local horse races. Seemingly a man of either good luck or good connections (or perhaps both), three of his new friends, George Hill, Bill Archer and George Loseby, bought him O’Brien’s Hotel. They told him to repay the loan “…when you can.”

Now renamed Adams’ Tattersall’s Hotel, it was a popular base for the running of sweepstakes. These had always been run on Melbourne Cup day but became a regular occurrence on Sydney race meetings, George Adams running his first Tattersall’s sweep on the Sydney Cup of 1881. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, he soon repaid his loan, then went on to obtain interests in a colliery, a collier, power stations and the Palace Theatre.

Religious bodies in NSW agitated against the sweepstakes, and the government legislated against their use of the postal service. Adams moved the operation to Queensland but that government, too, legislated against it. Tasmania looked a likely prospect, so in 1895 the island state became its new home. In fact, Premier of the day, Sir Edward Braddon, legislated in its favour. Over the years, Adams bought a lot of property in and around Hobart, constructing many of the city’s buildings. He lived there the rest of his life, dying of a stroke on 23 September 1904 at the age of 65. He was buried at Cornelian Bay Cemetery. His headstone reads, simply, George Adams (Tattersall’s).

Tattersall’s was run from Hobart headquarters for over half a century. Despite the Federal Government trying to strangle the operation through postal laws, the business continued, going from strength to strength, the arrangement proving beneficial to both Tattersall’s and Tasmania. In the days up to the Second World War, as much as half of the state’s income came from that one source. Postwar, however, returns dwindled, and eventually, the Victorian Government made an attractive offer, with Tattersall’s making the move to Melbourne in 1954. One sad matter for the man himself was that, after losing two wives and having no children, there were no direct descendants.

Tattersall’s was publicly listed in 2005 in a $2-billion float, although effectively only 10,000 of the 800,000 shares were available for public subscription.

Now you know who I speak of when I mention George Adams. When he landed in Sydney, he was a 16-year-old lad of humble English origins but went on to become one of our best-known – if frequently forgotten – personalities.