A golden opportunity: Mayor Smith and Melbourne’s emergence as a global city

In the earliest decades of the settlement of Melbourne, people’s backgrounds and origins were hazy and unknown, allowing a golden opportunity to reinvent and reprise not just individual wealth and success but also, consequently, the nature of society. At the same time, Melbourne was emerging as a truly global colonial city. Within this context, John Thomas Smith was making a rapid progression from son of a convict shoemaker to middle-class mayor of Melbourne. Such dramatic social mobility was a uniquely colonial phenomenon and material culture had a vital role to play in the renegotiation of Melbourne’s middle class.