Dr. Eustace Henry Lever Pratt & Caroline (née Kershaw)
Ambrose Goddard Hesketh Pratt (31 August 1874 – 13 April 1944) was an Australian writer born into a cultivated family in Forbes, New South Wales.[1][2]
Pratt was the third of seven children of Eustace Pratt, a well-connected physician fluent in Mandarin Chinese who had spent some time in India and China, and was a friend of Henry Parkes and Edmund Barton. His grandfather Henry Pratt, also a medical man, had in his later years become obsessed with Eastern religions and philosophies of India and Tibet. Ambrose himself was brought up by an amah and educated at St Ignatius' College, Riverview and Sydney Grammar School. He had private tutors for French, German, and the manly arts boxing, riding, fencing and shooting.[3]
After abandoning studies in Medicine, he took up Law.
Around the time of his university studies Pratt began writing pro-labour (and anti-Asian immigration) articles for The Australian Worker. Once qualified as a solicitor, he rose to admission to the Supreme Court of New South Wales in 1897. But this life must not have suited him, as he left to follow a more adventurous existence, including work on a Pacific trading steamer and as a Queensland drover.
He travelled to England where he commenced writing novels and stories for magazines such as The Bulletin and The Lone Hand, and began what was to become a career in journalism with the Daily Mail which brought him back to Australia in 1905.
He joined The Age as a journalist in 1905, gaining considerable influence (David Syme was a mentor), and was a member of the party with Prime Minister Andrew Fisher visiting the newly founded Union of South Africa for the opening of its parliament. In 1918, as a prominent protectionist in the tariff debate then raging, became founding editor and part-owner of the Australian Industrial and Mining Standard to 1927.[2] He was involved in companies mining for tin in Malaya and Siam.
Pratt ended his life an opponent of the White Australia Policy and attempted to ameliorate the kind of xenophobia prevalent at the time (and finding support in the pages to The Bulletin) with his writings, exemplified by his 1941 play A Point in Time.[3] His book The Real South Africa similarly had what would now be regarded as a remarkably enlightened view of the position of Black South Africans.[1]
In 1941, Pratt was appointed as a Commander of the Order of the White Elephant by the government of Thailand, for his service as consul-general in Australia. He was the first Australian inducted into the order.[6]
^ abcdeOxford Companion to Australian Literature (2nd ed.) Oxford University Press, Melbourne 1994
^ abcdefgLangmore, Diane. "Pratt, Ambrose Goddard Hesketh (1874–1944)". Biography - Ambrose Goddard Hesketh Pratt - Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 28 July 2016. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
