The 2015 Hutchins Lion honoured in Anniversary Week
This year William Lambert Dobson KCMG was lionised at the luncheon which was attended by the School community and also Simon Dobson, the great great grand-nephew of William Lambert Dobson, and Simon’s mother Elizabeth Dobson.
W L Dobson was born in England in 1833 and travelled to Hobart with his father (founder of the legal firm Dobson, Mitchell and Allport) in 1834. He commenced at Hutchins in 1848, was the first Head Boy in 1849 and opened the School building with Headmaster J V Buckland. He was the convenor of the first recorded reunion of Old Boys in 1859 and was secretary of the Committee. He studied law and had an illustrious career in the legal professional becoming Attorney-General in 1861. He became Leader of the Opposition in 1864 and was appointed Puisne Judge in the Supreme Court in 1870 (aged 36). During his time in parliament he was responsible for the Act abolishing imprisonment for debt (1867) and for the Public Schools Act (1868), giving Tasmania the first compulsory education in Australia. He was appointed Chief Justice in 1885 and acted as Deputy Governor in 1884, 1886–87 and 1892–93. In 1886, in London he was knighted by Queen Victoria and was the first Chancellor of the University of Tasmania, President of the Tasmanian Council of Education and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Tasmania.
In 1896 he donated 10 acres of land to the Queenborough Town Board which became known as Lambert Park. In 1897 he was appointed KCMG. William Lambert Dobson died at the age of 65 from Typhoid fever on 17 March 1898 and was buried in the Queenborough Cemetery.