William Henry Allard

Councillor, Mayor & Estate Agent

Born on 11 October 1859 at St. Kilda, Melbourne one of six children to A. M. Allard.  After his education at St. Kilda College he worked as a junior clerk at the Port Melbourne branch of the National Bank of Australia but resigned at the age of 22 to become an estate agent founding “W. H. Allard & Co”; little is known of the period during the land boom of the 1880s and 90s.  In 1914 Allard amalgamated his interests with the firm founded by W. L. Baillieu (1859-1936) which was given to his brother Arthur Sydney (1872-1943) in 1904 to manage; Arthur's son (Jack) Kingsbury (q.v.) later became a director.  The company, “Baillieu Allard Pty Ltd” was widely known throughout Australia and was responsible for the exchange of some of the most expensive properties in Melbourne.  Allard was an original councillor of the “Auctioneers and Estate Agents’ Association (Victoria)”, and was “regarded as one of the heads of his profession…held in high esteem among reality investors for his sound judgment of freehold value”.  Locally, Allard was elected as a councillor of the Brighton City Council (1895-1911) and served as Mayor in 1902-03 and “did much towards making the seaside municipality one of the best managed in the metropolitan area”.  He resided at Roslyn - 132 North Road, Brighton where he died of exhaustion on 13 September 1927; in 1884 he married Florence née Wilson.  A keen sportsman, active Mason with the Brighton Lowry Lodge, and member of the North Road Presbyterian Congregation, Allard’s funeral was one of the largest seen in Brighton for many years with some 600 mourners.  The Herald noted that Allard “presented the unusual and happy combination of good clubman and churchman, a patron of sports and a Mason”.  A son was killed at Gallipoli during the Great War.

Monumental Headstone (enlarge image)

Source:

The Argus 14 & 15 September 1927.

The Herald 13 September 1927.

Brighton Southern Cross 17 September 1927.

Smith, J. (ed), “Cyclopedia of Victoria” (1903).