John Hutchinson

painter, amateur photographer(?), sculptor and medical practitioner, was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. He arrived at Sandhurst (Bendigo) with the first rush of 1852 and subsequently conducted a medical practice at the shop of 'Jones, the Chemist' (possibly Henry Gilbert Jones). Hutchinson was involved with the invention of the spirometer and researched respiratory diseases common among the diggers, both activities bringing him more than local celebrity. He was honorary curator of Sandhurst's geological museum located in the Mechanics Institute building. His valuable collection of minerals was purchased when he left Bendigo to form the nucleus of the present museum (although he had originally intended it to go to the British Museum, London).

In the British courts at the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition Dr Hutchinson exhibited a daguerreotype of the Melbourne Exhibition Building, an 'anatomical model' and skulls and bones of Aborigines. While obviously only the collector of the last, he probably took the daguerreotype himself as he was active in various arts, being said to be well known locally as 'a conversationalist, violinist, draughtsman, painter, and as a sculptor working in bas-relief'. No examples of any of his various art works survive and he must have taken them with him when he left Bendigo for Fiji in 1861. He died there in July, aged 50. An obituary was published in the Bendigo Advertiser on 7 May 1862.

Staff Writer.