Clipper Ship 'City of Adelaide'

Alfred Sandover (1866-1958), hardware merchant and benefactor, was born at Plymouth, Devon, England, youngest of five children of William Sandover, a hotelkeeper who became a politician, and his wife Mary Billing, née Bate.

Alfred's father William Sandover (1823-1909) was a hotelkeeper before becoming a politician. By 1866 William was sufficiently affluent to take his family on a trip back to England, and for them to enjoy the comfort of the first-class saloon of the City of Adelaide. They sailed from Port Adelaide on 5 January 1866 and arrived in London on 13 April 1866, a duration of 100 days. Alfred was born on 24 November 1866 and thus was likely conceived during the voyage.

Alfred's family returned to Australia on the City of Adelaide's return voyage to Adelaide in 1867. That voyage departed England on the 25th July 1867 when Alfred was 9 months old and arrived in Adelaide on the 12th October 1867 after a voyage that lasted 79 days. Thus Alfred, as an infant, was a passenger in his own right rather than being a 'stowaway' in his pregnant mother as he was on the previous voyage to London.

Alfred was considered a delicate child. Educated at North Adelaide Grammar School, he gained first-class honours in the senior public examination in 1881. He moved to Perth to join his brother’s business in 1884.

In July 1895 Alfred married Rose Allen in Melbourne, and in the following year he bought an 8-acre property at Claremont, Perth where he built a house which he named "Knutsford".

The diminutive Alfred Sandover became prominent in the business, philanthropic and sporting life of Perth. A 'dynamic, colourful and kindly businessman', he combined 'shrewd foresight in commercial dealings with unfailing, old-world courtesy'.

President (1910-11) of the Perth Chamber of Commerce, he served on the committees of the Chamber of Manufactures (1943-46), the Western Australian Employers' Federation and the Perth Children's Hospital, and gave generously to the Home of Peace, Subiaco. He was also a member of the senate of the University of Western Australia (1912-15 and 1919-31) and of the Council for Church of England Schools (1922-50), and provided land from his Knutsford estate for the establishment of Christ Church Grammar School.

In 1921 he donated the Sandover Medal, which has been presented annually to the fairest and best player in the West Australian Football League. (This is analogous to the Magarey Medal in the South Australian NFL and the Brownlow Medal in the Victorian FL – now the AFL.)

Alfred Sandover held office in several cricket clubs, collected fine furniture and paintings, and loved to read. In 1951 he was appointed M.B.E. Survived by his daughter and two sons, he died on 4 May 1958 in his Perth home and was cremated; his estate was sworn for probate at £68,978. A building at Christ Church Grammar was named after him. His son (Sir) Eric Sandover succeeded him as chairman of the family firm.

Source: Jenny Mills, The Australian Dictionary of Biography