From 1921 to 1934, Bevil Molesworth was the Director of tutorial classes for the Workers’ Educational Association and lectured in history and geography at the University of Queensland. He broadcast on stations 4QG and 4BK, and joined the ‘Queensland talks’ advisory committee of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). He left Brisbane to build a formative career as an ABC Director of Talks.

Impact On Brisbane Society

Bevil Molesworth was one of those well-connected local celebrities who would eventually outgrow Brisbane society for a national role. His father, Hugh Thomas Molesworth, was a noted Anglican cleric in the Thompson Estate. Bevil Molesworth’s wife, Maud Margaret (‘Mall’) Mutch, was the Australasian women’s singles tennis champion in 1922-1923. However, Bevil Molesworth’s great impact was when he returned to the University of Queensland as Director of Tutorial Classes for the Workers’ Educational Association in 1921 (he had returned as previously being lecturer in history at the University of Tasmania, and at University of Sydney in Marxism and economic history). Molesworth kept the Workers’ Educational Association going as much as he could, facing off the hostility of Queensland Labor to matters of intellectual belief (rather than political action), as well as from the conservative elitist attitudes within the University of Queensland towards the education of workers. Those forces would eventually kills off that adult education program, in the invested interests of the extension programs from technical colleges and the University.

Citations

Marion Consandine, ‘Molesworth, Bevil Hugh (1891–1971)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/molesworth-bevil-hugh-11144/text19849, published first in hardcopy 2000, accessed online 18 December 2017.

Image Citation

Many Seek To Give Radio Talks, Faults To Be Avoided. The Courier-Mail, Tuesday 9 May 1939, p. 5.