Background
He was born on 15 December 1866 in Richmond, Victoria.
He was born on 15 December 1866 in Richmond, Victoria.
He was the son of the famous evangelist Emilia Louise Baeyertz. His capacity to memorize a page at a glance enabled him to display an apparently inexhaustible supply of knowledge and to acquire several languages. He claimed to have learnt Maori by memorizing a dictionary.
His favourite party trick was to read a newspaper column then recite it backwards.