Hon B.T. Finniss

Boyle (B.T.) Travers Finniss

18 August 1807

Pre-Party System

Former Member

Mount Barker

House of Assembly

01 May 1847

A prominent public figure during the first decades of South Australian settlement, in 1857 Boyle Finniss became the first Premier in the newly formed South Australian Parliament. Arriving from England at Kangaroo Island in 1836, he was an assistant to Surveyor-General Colonel William Light, and played a role in the laying out of the City of Adelaide and its immediate surroundings. In 1838 he formed a surveying firm with Light, and in the early 1840's established several other business interests. The eventual failure of these saw him return to the public service, first as Commissioner of Police, then as Treasurer. He was appointed Colonial Secretary in 1851 with the approval of the semi-democratic enlarged Legislative Council, a position in which he remained until it was made redundant by the establishment of self-government as set out under the radical new constitution of 1856. Although he officially became Premier in 1856 by virtue of his previous status as colonial secretary, he did not take an active role until his election to the House of Assembly in the first Parliamentary elections of March 1857. As was to be the case with many of his successors, his Premiership was a brief one, lasting less than four months from April to August 1857. He was active in politics until 1862 and held several positions in public office, including Auditor-General from 1876 until his resignation in 1881. Finniss wrote "The Constitutional History of South Australia" in his retirement, reflecting that it was largely the lack of clear, Party-based ideologies that caused such political instability in the early years of self-government - a period that would see forty-seven different governments in the thirty-six years to 1893. Finniss died in 1893, in Adelaide.

Commissioner, South Australian Police 1843-47

24 December 1893