Background
Walter Baldwin Spencer was born on June 23, 1860, in Lancashire, United Kingdom to Martha (née Circuit) and Rueben Spencer.
Walter Spencer introduced the study of zoology at the University of Melbourne and held the title of Emeritus Professor until his death in 1929. The Baldwin Spencer Building at the University of Melbourne is architecturally and historically significant to the State of Victoria and currently occupied by the Faculty of Architecture, Building, and Planning.
Walter Spencer introduced the study of zoology at the University of Melbourne and held the title of Emeritus Professor until his death in 1929. The Baldwin Spencer Building at the University of Melbourne is architecturally and historically significant to the State of Victoria and currently occupied by the Faculty of Architecture, Building, and Planning.
Order of St Michael and St George
the Victoria University of Manchester
the University of Oxford
anthropologist ethnographer Photographer
Walter Baldwin Spencer was born on June 23, 1860, in Lancashire, United Kingdom to Martha (née Circuit) and Rueben Spencer.
Walter Spencer attended Old Trafford school and Manchester School of Art, receiving training in drawing. In 1879 he began to study at Owens College (now the Victoria University of Manchester), where he developed an interest in evolutionary biology and worked alongside a professor of zoology Arthur Milnes Marshall. In 1881, Walter Spencer received a scholarship to attend the University of Oxford, studying science under Henry Nottidge Moseley. During this time, he gained exposure to the study of anthropology by attending lectures presented by Edward Burnett Tylor. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in biology obtaining first-class honours in 1884.
As a graduate, he worked as a teaching assistant to Moseley, aiding him in the transferral of the Pitt Rivers archaeological archive from the South Kensington Museum in London to Oxford University. In January 1886 he obtained a fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford.
A professor of biology at Melbourne University, Australia, from 1887 to 1894, Walter Spencer organized the building of the school's new biology department. In 1887 he took expeditionary trips to unexplored areas of Victoria, Australia, during which he sketched and photographed.
In 1894 Walter Spencer was the official photographer of the Horn Expedition to Central Australia, and between 1896 and 1898 he traveled to Alice Springs, where he studied the Arunta tribe, and to Lake Eyre, where he studied the Urabunna tribe. Both tribes initiated him into their ranks. He then recorded the ceremonies and sacred rites of the Aborigines, and the countryside of Central Australia, using Edison's cine camera along with his own still equipment (1901).
In 1912 Walter Spencer was made Special Commissioner and Special Protector of the Aborigines in Northern Australia. In order to compare Patagonian Indians with Australian Aborigines, he set out in 1929 to follow Charles Darwin's voyage from England to Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America, but he died of a heart attack en route.
With a clear, accurate style, Walter Spencer was the first person to photograph native tribesmen in their natural environment in any land. He was also the first to photograph Ayers Rock and Central Gorges in Australia. Combining his anthropological work with his photographic abilities, Walter Spencer left important documents of tribal life-style in its natural habitat.
Walter Spencer was married to Mary Elizabeth ('Lillie') Bowman in January 1887, and the couple had two daughters and a son, who died in infancy.