Philip Aaron Philips (11 June 1831 – 3 June 1913) was a New Zealand politician who served as the first

mayor of Auckland City The Mayor of Auckland City was the directly elected head of the Auckland City Council, the municipal government of Auckland City, New Zealand. The office existed from 1871 to 2010, when the Auckland City Council and mayoralty was abolished an ...

. He held the office from 1871 to 1874 and immediately prior to that, he was chairman of the City Board. He was a member of the

Auckland Provincial Council The Auckland Province was a province of New Zealand from 1853 until the abolition of provincial government in 1876. Area The province covered roughly half of the North Island of New Zealand. It was the largest of the six initial provinces, both ...

and the

Auckland Harbour Board The Auckland Harbour Board was a public body that operated the ports of both Auckland and Onehunga from 1871 to 1988 and was dissolved in 1989. Its successor organisation is Ports of Auckland, which assumed the possessions and responsibilities of ...

Early life and family

Philips was born in

Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...

, England, on 11 June 1831, into a Jewish family. He worked in a wholesale firm in London from 1845 to 1848. He then emigrated to New Zealand and arrived in

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

in August 1848. After a year, he built himself a store in Vulcan Lane off Queen Street. After some years, he fell ill and went to

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

for recovery. There, he married Annie Myers, the daughter of Israel and Esther Myers. The couple returned to Auckland and Philips opened a second hardware store; this one in lower Queen Street. He was bankrupted in the post-war economic bust following the

New Zealand Wars The New Zealand Wars took place from 1845 to 1872 between the New Zealand colonial government and allied Māori on one side and Māori and Māori-allied settlers on the other. They were previously commonly referred to as the Land Wars or the M ...

. His wife died on 18 February 1888 at age 52. She was buried in the Jewish part of

Symonds Street Cemetery Symonds Street Cemetery is a historic cemetery and park in central Auckland, New Zealand. It is in 5.8 hectares of deciduous forest on the western slope of Grafton Gully, by the corner of Symonds Street and Karangahape Road, and is crossed by th ...

. There was a large attendance at her funeral, with "nearly every member of the Jewish community" present, plus the mayor ( Albert Devore) and many of the city councillors.

Municipal career

Philips became politically active in 1869. He stood for election to the city board (the predecessor of the municipal council) on 23 June 1869 but withdrew on election day. At the next meeting of the City Board, he was proposed as the board's chairman (chairmen did not necessarily have to be board members) but he was not elected. On 26 November 1869, he was one of three members elected to the sixth

in the Auckland East electorate (the other two were Henry Ellis and

William John Hurst William is a male given name of Germanic languages, Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norm ...

). Philips remained a member of the provincial council until 5 March 1875. Within days of getting elected to the provincial council, the City Board needed to elect another chairman and this time, Philips was elected unanimously to that position on 16 December 1869. In May 1871, Auckland was gazetted a borough council and the legislation commuted the City Board representatives to become the inaugural councillors. Philips, who was still chairman at that point, was unanimously elected by his fellow councillors as inaugural mayor and held this office until 1874. His successor,

Henry Isaacs Henry Isaacs (1831 – 2 August 1909, London) London-born, was a prominent Auckland, New Zealand general merchant from 1850 to 1875 principally through the firm known as E. and H. Isaacs. His elder brother Edward (1820—1891), who established ...

, was also a Jewish merchant. Philips was a member of the

. When Philips retired from the mayoralty, he became the city's town clerk and remained in that role until 1899.

Retirement

By May 1901, Philips had moved to Sydney. He died at the Sydney Sanitarium in

Wahroonga Wahroonga is a suburb in the North Shore (Sydney)#Upper North Shore, Upper North Shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, 18 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district, in the Local government in Australia ...

in June 1913. He was buried at

Rookwood Cemetery Rookwood Cemetery (officially named Rookwood Necropolis) is a heritage-listed cemetery in Rookwood, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is the largest List of necropolises, necropolis in the Southern Hemisphere and is the world's largest ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Philips, Philip 1831 births 1913 deaths Mayors of Auckland 19th-century New Zealand people Jewish mayors Jewish New Zealand politicians Members of the Auckland Provincial Council Auckland Harbour Board members Burials at Rookwood Cemetery New Zealand emigrants to Australia