The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/FitzGibbon, Edmond Gerald
FitzGibbon, Edmond Gerald, C.M.G., Chairman of Metropolitan Board of Works, Melbourne, Vict., is a native of Cork, Ireland, and was employed under the Committee of the Privy Council on of Education in England. Having decided to emigrate, he arrived in Melbourne in Sept. 1852, and went to the Mount Alexander gold diggings, where he remained until the next year, when he was appointed Reader to the Legislative Council of Victoria by Governor Latrobe. Mr. FitzGibbon was appointed to assist Mr. Kerr, the Town Clerk of Melbourne, in 1854, and on Mr. Kerr's resignation in 1856 he succeeded him in that position, which he held till 1891, when he was appointed first Chairman of the newly constituted Metropolitan Board of Works of the city of Melbourne. Mr. FitzGibbon was called to the Victorian Bar in 1860, and in 1861 unsuccessfully contested South Bourke in the Free Trade interest. Two years later he was appointed secretary of the Victorian branch of the league formed to prevent the transportation of criminals to Australia. He married a daughter of the late Mr. Michael Dawson, one of the early colonists of Victoria, and was created C.M.G. in 1892.