Alfred M. Simpson

[1] After a series of financial setbacks the family emigrated, virtually penniless, to South Australia on the John Woodhall, arriving in January 1849, and in 1855 founded in Gawler Place the hardware firm that in April 1864 became A. Simpson & Son.

He gradually took greater control of the business, replacing simple hand tools with power machinery of all kinds — drills, grinders, guillotines, mills and presses, all belt-driven from overhead shafts driven by steam engines.

In 1871 another factory was built further south on Gawler place, in the old (1841) Congregational chapel, once the home of J. L. Young's Adelaide Educational Institution.

[10] Simpson, first and foremost a business man, was reluctant to enter Parliament, but in 1887 (South Australia's jubilee year) he consented to contest a vacancy for the Central Division of the Legislative Council on behalf of the Protectionist Party.

He signed the nomination paper on the Wednesday prior to the election, and did not address a single meeting, yet was returned at the head of the poll, as a colleague of J. H. Angas, also a Protectionist.

He not only opposed the introduction of payment of members, but, when that measure was carried, he gave the whole of his parliamentary allowance (£1,200) to be used as prize money for the encouragement of rifle shooting.