Adolphus Taylor
Australian journalist and politician (1857-1900)
Adolphus George Taylor (14 June 1857 – 18 January 1900) was an Australian journalist and populist politician, active in New South Wales the 1880s and 1890s.
Early life
Reputed the illegitimate son of a gentleman father, Taylor was born in Mudgee, New South Wales and was educated at the local Church of England School and became a teacher in Mudgee by 1875. He joined the New South Wales Permanent Artillery as a private, but was court-martialled for "insubordination" in 1878. He then joined or returned to the Mudgee Independent as a journalist.
Political career
Taylor - "a lanky youth, dressed in a torn coat that hang from his ears" - won a surprise victory in the seat Mudgee in 1882, pushing the longtime popular hero, Sir John Robertson, into second place. He became an expert in parliamentary procedure and constitutional law, and established that George Reid's appointment as a Minister for Public Instruction in 1883 was unconstitutional, forcing Reid to stand for a by-election, which he lost. His emotional and often drunken harangues of the House led to frequent expulsions and as a result of being suspended twice in a row for a week by the Speaker, Edmund Barton, he successfully sued Barton for £1,000. In 1886, he travelled to London to fight Barton's appeal to the Privy Council, having raised his fare by lecturing on "The Iron Hand in Politics" and selling his stamp collection. He took "his wife, his mother, a cockatoo, a parrot and a magpie" to England and won his own case, although he then refused to accept the damages on the basis that they would come out of the taxpayers pockets rather than Barton's.
In April 1887, Taylor resigned from Parliament so that he could be appointed examiner of patents.
“Adolphus Taylor” enters the record as australian journalist and politician (1857-1900). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Adolphus, Taylor and Australian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4684480. VIAF identifies the subject as 91519329. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1857, 1900, 1875 and 1878.
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This entry incorporates text from “Adolphus Taylor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.