Bernhard Wise

Bernhard Ringrose Wise was an Australian politician. He was a social reformer, seen by some as a traitor to his class, but who was not fully accepted by the labor Movement. He said, My failure in Sydney has been so completemy qualities those which Australia does not recognise, my defects those which Australians dislike most. When he died, William Holman said, There is hardly anything in our public life which we have to consider today that cannot be traced back to his brilliant mind and clear foresight held undisputed supremacy as the foremost debater, foremost thinker and foremost public man in the life of New South Wales.

Wise was born in the Sydney suburb of Petersham. He was the second son of Edward Wise, a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. After his fathers death in 1865, his mother took the family to Leeds, England to put her sons through grammar school, where their homemade clothes exposed us to ridicule and bullying. She moved to Rugby and took work, so that Wise could be educated at Rugby School as a day student. He won a 90 a year scholarship to The Queens College, Oxford, where he had a distinguished career, being Cobden prizeman in 1878 and gaining a first class in the honour school of law in 1880. He was president of the Oxford Union and president of the Oxford University athletic club.

Source: Wikipedia