William Paxton (Australian businessman)

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William Paxton (1818 – 1 September 1893) was a South Australian businessman who helped develop the Burra copper mines and later returned to England a wealthy man. Born in England and trained as a pharmacist, he arrived in Adelaide on the Lalla Rookh in August 1840 and soon took over a Hindley Street chemist shop. In 1844 he reopened as Paxton’s Medical Hall, famous for its eye-catching façade. He faced a criminal case over a morphine prescription but continued his business and briefly pursued a flour-milling venture.

Paxton was a founder of the South Australian Mining Association, known as “The Snobs,” and bought shares in the Burra Burra mine. The mine’s shares rose high and paid substantial dividends at their peak. He built a substantial land portfolio, including property at Kooringa where he constructed Paxton’s Cottages, and parcels at Semaphore South and Willaston. He helped develop Willaston from land in the Gawler Special Survey and lent money to John Reid, later reclaiming and subdividing the property.

In Burra he owned several hotels, shaping the town’s growth, and he owned a home on North Terrace in Adelaide that later became Ayers House. Paxton was active in public life, winning municipal elections in Hindmarsh and Gawler in 1852 and helping to found the Adelaide Morning Chronicle in 1852–53. He and his family left for England in 1855, never to return. He died in 1893 in Hove. His legacy endures in places named after him—Paxton Cottages, Paxton Terrace, and Paxton Square in Burra, and Paxton Street in Semaphore South—and in a caricature by S. T. Gill that recalls his early days as a pharmacist.