D'Arcy Wentworth (14 February 1762 – 7 July 1827) was an Irish-Australian surgeon and the first paying passenger to arrive in the new colony of New South Wales. He served under the first seven governors of the Colony, and from 1810 to 1821, he was "great assistant" to Governor Lachlan Macquarie. Wentworth led a campaign for the rights and recognition of emancipists and for trial by jury.
Early life D'Arcy Wentworth was born in Portadown, County Armagh, Ireland, the sixth child and fourth son of Martha and D'Arcy Wentworth. His family had left Yorkshire for safe haven in Ireland after the execution of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, in 1641. In 1778, aged sixteen, D'Arcy was apprenticed to Alexander Patton, a surgeon-apothecary, in nearby Tandragee. In 1782, he joined the Irish Volunteers, one of the local regiments formed during the American Revolutionary War, to defend Ireland against invasion from France; his commission as a junior officer was signed by George III.Belfast Newsletter, 3–7 January 1783, In May 1785, having completed a seven-year apprenticeship, D'Arcy left Ireland. He was seeking an appointment with the East India Company, and as the training of Irish surgeons was not recognised in England, it was necessary to go to London to gain accreditation.
Life in England Wentworth sailed on the mailboat from Donaghadee to Portpatrick in Scotland. First he went to South Yorkshire, as the guest of his cousin, William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, at "Wentworth Woodhouse". It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Fitzwilliam gave D'Arcy encouragement and advice. He attended Whig party gatherings and race meetings at York, Doncaster and Wakefield with Fitzwilliam, who introduced him to the societies of York and London, their up and coming lawyers, young politicians and aspiring bureaucrats.
On 1 December 1785, Wentworth went before the Court of Examiners of the Company of Surgeons in London. He qualified as a "Mate to Indiamen", eligible to work with the East India Company, once he had twelve months practical experience "walking the wards" in one of London's large charity hospitals.Royal College of Surgeons, Company of Surgeons Examination Book 1745–1800, page 11. Wentworth accepted the invitation of Percivall Pott, one of his examiners, to "walk the wards" of St Bartholomew's, Smithfield under his direction. He attended lectures by other prominent physicians including John Hunter, and dissections held in the Company of Surgeons' anatomy theatre at the Old Bailey.D'Arcy Wentworth, Medical Notebook, p.112. Wentworth Papers Mitchell Library, Sydney.
Wentworth waited in vain for a position to become available in the East India Company. Warren Hastings had brought peace to India, and the company had an oversupply of surgeons. Wentworth supported himself in London by mastering the art of card playing, gambling at card tables in several inns and coffee houses, but he found many of those who lost to him would simply refuse to pay.
Eventually, Wentworth pursued a number of prominent players who had defaulted on their debts. Chief Magistrate and novelist Henry Fielding described gambling as "the School in which most Highwaymen of great Eminence have been bred."Henry Fielding, An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase in Robbers, London, 1751, Part III. Wentworth was arraigned before the Courts four times for highway robbery, but never convicted. On each occasion his defaulter either failed to appear to prosecute him, found himself unable to positively identify D'Arcy Wentworth, or sought only to name and shame him.
In March 1787, Fitzwilliam's patronage secured Wentworth a direction from the Home Office, to leave without delay for Portsmouth, where the First Fleet was making ready to sail to Botany Bay. He was to seek out John White, Principal Surgeon, on the Charlotte, who could advise him of any vacancies for assistant surgeons on the Fleet. D'Arcy learnt that to become a naval surgeon would require further accreditation from the Company of Surgeons. He returned to his studies, and on 5 July 1787, examined a second time by the Court of Examiners he qualified as an Assistant Surgeon, Second Mate, Third Rate.Royal College of Surgeons, Company of Surgeons Examination Book 1745–1800, page 22. The rate determined the class of vessel on which the Assistant Surgeon could serve, according to the number of her cannons.
Arrival in the Colony of New South Wales On 17 January 1790, Wentworth left England on the Second Fleet on board the Neptune, the most notorious of the convict transports. The neglect and ill treatment of her convicts resulted in the deaths of one hundred and forty-seven men and eleven women, over 30% of the convicts she transported. Wentworth was on board as a passenger; he had no influence, no position on the ship and no employment arranged in the Colony. He arrived in Sydney on 26 June 1790, and spent his first five weeks assisting the local surgeons to care for the newly arrived convicts.
The Colony was short of food, strict rationing had been in place for three months. Five weeks after the Neptune arrived, to avoid a worsening disaster, Governor Arthur Phillip sent nearly 200 convicts and their superintendents to Norfolk Island on the Surprize, en route to China. Wentworth went with them, "to act as an assistant to the surgeon there, being reputed to have the necessary requisites for such a situation".Captain David Collins, Diary, 1 August 1780.
Wentworth disembarked at Norfolk Island on 16 August 1790. The Commandant, Lieut. Governor Philip Gidley King appointed him as an unpaid Assistant Surgeon. On the island, he became friends with Captain John Hunter, whose vessel, HMS Sirius, had been wrecked on a sunken reef off the island five months earlier. Hunter and most of his crew were stranded on Norfolk Island for nearly a year, awaiting a vessel to return them to Sydney.
In December 1791, King appointed Wentworth to a second position on Norfolk Island, Superintendent of Convicts, responsible for overseeing up to 150 convict labourers on building projects, land clearing and farm work..Lieut. Governor King to Governor Phillip, 29 December 1791, HRNSW, Vol.I, Part II, page 575. In June 1793, Earl Fitzwilliam offered him a lifeline; he appointed his London lawyer, Charles Cookney, Wentworth's agent, making it possible for him to become an early trader in the Colony.Earl Fitzwilliam to D'Arcy Wentworth, 24 June 1793. Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments, Sheffield.
Land grants and later subdivisions By the time of his death in 1827, D'Arcy Wentworth had acquired around 22,000 acres of land.
The estate Darcyville was later subdivided as the “Toongabbee Subdivision”. Section 2 of this subdivision includes area along Wentworth Avenue to the North of the Railway line was made available for sale in 1886.
Street names and suburbs
Wentworth Avenue is named in honour of D’Arcy Wentworth and his family who held land the parcel of land known as Darcyville in the area. The avenue is parallel to the railway line and extends from Bridge Road, Westmead, New South Wales to Toongabbie railway station, passing through the suburbs of Wentworthville, Wentworth Point and Pendle Hill in New South Wales.
Public life During his thirty-seven years in New South Wales, D'Arcy Wentworth served under the first seven governors of the Colony.
The second governor, Captain John Hunter, gave Wentworth permission to leave Norfolk Island, and he arrived back in Sydney on 5 March 1796. He had worked without a break for six years on the island. He received £40 a year as Superintendent of Convicts, but had not been paid for his work as Assistant Surgeon. His applications for leave and requests for his position to be regularised had been ignored. In London, Earl Fitzwilliam pursued the matter of payment for his service as Assistant Surgeon, and in 1798, as a result of his efforts, Wentworth was paid arrears of £160, for six years work.Charles Cookney to D'Arcy Wentworth, 1798, Wentworth Papers, Mitchell Library, Sydney.
Soon after Wentworth's return, Hunter appointed him to Sydney Cove HospitalThe first hospital in Australia. https://thedirton.therocks.com/2012/03/first-hospital.html as an Assistant Surgeon, replacing Samuel Leeds, who had disqualified himself though drunkenness. In Sydney, Hunter allowed several people, including Wentworth, to act as traders, in an attempt to break the power of the Rum Corps officers through competition, and to lower the price of commodities. On 11 May 1799, he appointed Wentworth Assistant Surgeon at Parramatta, in charge of the hospital there, replacing James Mileham, who was later court martialled for refusing to attend the settlers, free people, and others.Thomas Jamison, Principal Surgeon, to Earl Camden, 20 July 1805. HRNSW, Vol. V, page 667.
Wentworth took up duty at Parramatta Hospital, "two long sheds, built in the form of a tent, and thatched... capable of holding two hundred patients."Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement of Port Jackson, Chapter XVI. "It was large and clean with a large vegetable garden attached to it."John Washington Price, Minerva Journal, ed. P.J.Fulton, Meigunyah Press, Melbourne, 2000. A week later, on 16 May 1799, Hunter granted him a fourteen year lease over six acres and twenty roods at Parramatta, on a knoll overlooking the river. Wentworth planted a dozen young Norfolk Island pines along the ridge line, and built a comfortable two storey house, that he named "Wentworth Woodhouse". John Price, surgeon on the Minerva, visited him there, he described it as "charmingly situated and, as John Milton says, 'Bosom'd high in tufted trees'."John Washington Price, Ibid. Price was quoting from John Milton's L'Allegro: "Towers & battlements it sees, bosom'd high in tufted trees."
Governor Philip Gidley King, RN, 28 September 1800 to 12 August 1806 Wentworth had been friendly with Philip Gidley King on Norfolk Island. On 15 April 1800, King returned to Sydney from London with a dormant commission, to act as governor in the case of the death or during the absence of Captain John Hunter.Dublin Post, 27 January 1798. During Hunter's final five months in the Colony, Wentworth provided friendship, assistance and undivided loyalty. His support rankled King. Wentworth had been friendly with Philip Gidley King on Norfolk Island, but when King took over as governor, he curtailed Wentworth's trading, impounded his trading stock and sent him back to Norfolk Island. John Grant, an emancipist, commented, "Governor King hates Hunter's friends."John Grant to his mother and sister, 13 July 1804, John Grant Papers, NLA.
Captain William Bligh, RN, 13 August 1806 to 26 January 1808 Captain William Bligh, who succeeded King, had D'Arcy Wentworth court martialled for disrespect, the result of conflicting instructions given by the Governor. As a consequence of Bligh's belligerence, Wentworth supported Major George Johnston and John Macarthur in the Rum Rebellion on 26 January 1808, that overthrew the Governor and placed him under house arrest.
Major-General Lachlan Macquarie, CB, 1 January 1810 to 1 December 1821 Lachlan Macquarie came ashore in Sydney on 1 January 1810. On 7 January he issued a Government and General Order declaring all official appointments made since Bligh's arrest null and void. On 20 February 1810, he ordered that D'Arcy Wentworth remain as Principal Surgeon, pending instructions from London. Macquarie recommended his appointment in his first despatch.Governor Macquarie to Viscount Castlereagh, 8 March 1810, HRA, Series I, Vol. VII, page 306.