Charles Edward Bright

Charles Edward Bright CMG JP (20 May 1829 – 17 July 1915)[1] was an English businessman in colonial Victoria.

Bright belonged to an old Worcestershire family possessing estates in the counties of Worcester and Hereford. He was the fifth son of the Robert Bright, of Bristol and Abbots Leigh, Somerset, by Caroline, daughter of Thomas Tyndall, of The Fort, Bristol. His father was a slaveholder who was compensated £8,384 by the British government for 404 slaves upon the abolition of slavery. Bright would benefit from his father's estate.[2]

Bright's brothers were Richard Bright, who was elected M.P. for East Somerset in 1868, and Lieut.-General Sir Robert Onesiphorus Bright.

Bright emigrated to Australia, arriving in Melbourne in Jan. 1854. He became a partner in the firms of Messrs. Antony Gibbs & Co., and Gibbs, Bright & Co. He was twice Chairman of the Melbourne Harbour Trust, and for many years Trustee of the Public Library, Museum, and National Gallery of Victoria. He was Commissioner to the Exhibition of London, 1861-2; Dublin, 1864; Melbourne, 1866-7; London, 1873-4; Melbourne, 1880; Calcutta, 1883; Adelaide, 1887; and Melbourne, 1888. On 25 August 1868 he married the Hon. Anne Maria Georgiana Manners-Sutton, daughter of the third Viscount Canterbury (Governor of Victoria 1866-73), by Georgiana, youngest daughter of Charles Tompson, of Witchingham Hall, Norfolk; and was created CMG in the 1883 Birthday Honours.[3]

References
  1. Hone, J. Ann. "Bright, Charles Edward (1829–1915)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Melbourne University Press. ISSN 1833-7538. Retrieved 15 November 2013 – via National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.
  2. Fernandes, C. Island Off the Coast of Asia: Instruments of statecraft in Australian foreign policy (Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2018), 14.
  3. Mennell, Philip (1892). "Bright, Charles Edward" . The Dictionary of Australasian Biography. London: Hutchinson & Co – via Wikisource.


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