b. 1818-03-04
d. 1896-08-02
FitzGerald was born and educated in Bath, Somerset, England. He went on to graduate
with his BA from Christ's College, Cambridge, in
1842. Shortly thereafter, in
1844, he took work at the British Museum, where he would become under-secretary in
1848, a position referenced in the minutes of an
1847 despatch in which FitzGerald presents his colonizing scheme for
Vancouver Island to Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies
Benjamin Hawes. Clearly, colonial issues suited him as he became the first secretary of the Colonial
Reform Society in
1850.
Also in 1850, he married Frances Erskine, and both set off for Lyttelton, New Zealand, in the
same year. It would be here that FitzGerald would leave his mark as the founder of
the newspaper, the Lyttelton Times, a sub-inspector of police from 1851-63, and as an immigration agent. FitzGerald was a key figure in New Zealand's Parliament,
where he would, eventually, lobby for the Maori to have special representation in
both houses, something achieved after his retirement in 1865. He spent the remainder of his working life as a civil servant, in a variety of capacities,
but he would be remembered more for his skills as a writer, journalist, newspaper
owner, and national-education advocate. He died in Wellington in 1896.