Hugh Dixson
Australian businessman and philanthropist (1841-1926)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sir Hugh Dixson (29 January 1841 – 11 May 1926) was an Australian businessman and philanthropist.
Hugh Dixson | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 29, 1841 |
| Died | May 11, 1926 (aged 85) |
| Occupations | Businessman and Philanthropist |
Biography
Dixson was born in George Street, Sydney, the son of Hugh Dixson and his wife Helen, née Craig.[1] He studied at the Elfred House Private School kept by William Timothy Cape at Paddington. At 14 years of age, Dixson worked at a timber yard for Phillip McMahon.[1] In 1866, he married Emma Elizabeth (1844–1922), daughter of William Edward Shaw.[2]
Philanthropy
In addition to seeking to fund a battleship for Britain, Dixson supported other patriotic causes. One such cause was the Legion of Frontiersmen, a patriotic, paramilitary organisation formed in Britain in 1905 by Roger Pocock, a former constable with the North West Mounted Police and Boer War veteran, to bolster the defensive capacity of the British Empire.
In 1900, Emma Dixson founded the Sydney Medical Mission, a service run by women for women of the poorer areas of the city.[3] She was a vice-president of the League of Boy Scouts,[4] and became the patron of the 1st Dulwich Hill Scout Group (known as "Mrs Emma Dixson's Own"),[5][6] donating the land and paying for the construction of the scout hall. Extensions to the scout hall were built in 1924 by the Dixson children, as a memorial to their mother.[6] In 1919, she gifted six houses in Surry Hills to the Royal Society for the Welfare of Mothers and Babies, to set up a model welfare centre.[7] It was opened in 1922, after Emma Dixson's death, by one of her daughters, and named the Emma Elizabeth Dixson Welfare Centre;[8] the day care centre which was part of it was known in abbreviated form as the Emma Dlxson Day Nursery.[9] She was a life governor of the Queen Victoria Homes for Consumptives,[2] the Crown Street Women's Hospital, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital[2] and of The Infants' Home Child and Family Services;[2] president of the women's branch of the Empire League,[2][10] and after its reorganisation, a life vice-president of the British Empire League in Australia;[2][11] the National Council of Women of New South Wales, and the Victoria League; president of the women's auxiliary of the Sydney City Mission; the only female patron of the Veterans' Home of New South Wales;[2] and vice-president of the New South Wales Home for Incurables, Ryde (to which they gave £20,000), and the Fresh Air League.[1]