Richard Goldsbrough, Date of Birth, Date of Death
TweetRichard Goldsbrough
English-born Australian businessman (1821-1886)
Date of Birth: 
About Richard Goldsbrough
- Richard Goldsbrough (17 October 1821 – 8 April 1886) was an English-born Australian business man, involved in the wool industry in the 19th century.
- Goldsbrough was born in Shipley, Yorkshire, the only son of Joshua Goldsbrough, a butcher, and his wife Hannah, née Speight.
- At 14 years of age Goldsbrough was apprenticed to a Bradford firm and became a wool stapler.
- Goldsbrough began working for himself in a small way in 1842, purchasing clips and sorting them for the manufacturers.
- His business was prospering, but feeling that Australia offered him a wider field, he sailed from Liverpool in 1847, leaving his wife in England, and after a short stay at Adelaide went on to Melbourne.
- In Melbourne, in 1848 he bought a weatherboard building on the corner of Williams Street and Flinders Lane and went into business as a classer and packer and as a buyer of wool for sale in England.
- In 1850 he set up the first regular wool auction in Bourke St, Melbourne.
- In 1853 he went into partnership with Edward Row and George Kirk under the name of E.
- Row and Company.
- He prospered and was able to buy a substantial bluestone warehouse and a second one in 1857 at the corner of Bourke and William Streets.
- In 1857 he took Hugh Parker into partnership and the business of R.
- Goldsbrough and Company was established.
- The building at the corner of Bourke and William Streets was begun in 1862.
- Other partners were admitted in later years, John Sutcliffe Horsfall, David Parker and Arthur Parker in 1876; and in 1881 the business was amalgamated with the Australasian Agency and Banking Corporation and formed into a public company, R Goldsbrough & Co Ltd, of which Goldsbrough was chairman of directors.
- In the 1870s Goldsbrough was also associated with Alexander Robertson, John Wagner and Salathiel Booth in several properties. Goldsbrough died at Melbourne from an internal tumour on 8 April 1886.
- He and his wife, Emma Hodgson (1822–1877), probably had three children, all of whom died young in Yorkshire.
- Goldsbrough died without a surviving wife or children.
- In 1888, his partners merged with the Sydney firm of Mort & Co to form Goldsbrough Mort & Co Ltd.
- In 1963, the firm merged again to form Elder Smith Goldsbrough Mort Ltd which traded under that name until 1982.
- The present day business is Elders Limited.Goldsbrough took little part in public life, although he was a steward of the Victoria Racing Club from its formation in 1864 until 1886.
- He was essentially a business man, always abreast of the times.
- He had played an important role in the development of the wool trade of Australia.
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