13 March 1886   Whinham College

John Whinham, the founder of Whinham College, died on the 13 March 1886. He had suffered financial ruin in England in 1848/9 and came to South Australia in 1852. For a while he taught mathematics at St Peter's College, but in 1854 decided to start his own school beginning with one pupil.

Whinham College, on the corner of Ward and Jeffcott Streets, North Adelaide, grew from this. Many well known South Australians were educated there. Whinham advertised that the aims of the college were to develop moral training, physical training, and mental training, in that order.

The curriculum included the teaching of maths, languages, ancient and modern, music, drawing, and commercial studies, and was aimed at preparing students for the University or Civil Service examinations. The school was very successful and in time Whinham's son, Robert, took over as head of the college until his death, after a fall from a horse, on the 10 October 1884.

After Robert's death the college began to decline until Whinham's own death in 1886. The building is now a Lutheran Seminary.

George Loyau, Notable South Australians , Adelaide, 1885, pp. 43-44.