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Sidney Myer

Sir Sidney Baerski Myer, KB, born Simcha Baevski (8 February 1878 – 5 September 1934) was an Australian businessman and philanthropist.

Myer was born in Kritchev, Russian Poland (now Belarus), the son of a storekeeper of Jewish origin, though he later became a pillar of the Anglican Church. He migrated to Melbourne in 1899 to join his elder brother, Elcon Myer, with little money and poor English.

Determined to succeed, Sidney and Elcon Myer established a shop in Bendigo. This not proving very successful, Sidney Myer took his goods, stockings, laces, etc., from door to door, and, in spite of having little English, sold his wares. He then bought a cart and travelled through country towns. The business was later moved to Pall Mall, Bendigo, where it prospered, other shops were added, and later the Bendigo business of Craig Williamson and Thomas was bought.

In 1911 Myer purchased the business of Wright and Neil, Drapers, in Bourke Street, near the General Post Office, and a new building was completed and opened in 1914. The Doveton woollen mills at Ballarat were purchased in 1918, and in 1921 a new building fronting on Post Office Place, was added at Melbourne. These became the Myer chain of department stores.

The purchase of the old established businesses of Robertson and Moffat and Stephens and Son, followed, and in 1925 the new building on the Lonsdale Street frontage was begun. A separate building in Queensberry-street, Melbourne, was put up in 1928, and the Collins Street businesses of T. Webb and Sons, china importers, and W. H. Rocke and Company, house furnishers, were bought and transferred to the Bourke-street building. A public company had in the meantime been formed which by 1934 had a paid-up capital of nearly £2,500,000. A controlling interest in Marshall's Limited of Adelaide was also acquired. The company was then employing 5300 people with medical and nursing aid for the staff, and rest homes for them at the seaside and in the Dandenong Ranges.

During the Depression of the 1930s he felt a responsibility to contribute something to the community that had assisted him in achieving business success and a personal fortune. Rather than terminate workers in his Department Store, all staff, including himself, had their wages cut. Relief work was personally financed by a 22,000-pound sum, to provide employment opportunities. For the unemployed at Christmas he financed a Christmas dinner for 10,000 people at the Royal Exhibition Building, including a gift for every child.

Some of Myer's friends and business associates feared that the business was developing too fast, but the company was in a prosperous state and fast recovering from the effects of a depression, when Myer died suddenly on 5 September 1934.

He was married twice, firstly to a Miss Flegeltaub and, secondly to Margery Merlyn Baillieu, who survived him with two sons and two daughters.

His will was proved at £922,000. 100,000 people attended his funeral. The Sidney Myer Charitable Trust was established, now known as the Myer Foundation, to continue the tradition of philanthropy began by its founder. The most famous philanthropic funding was for the construction of the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in the Kings Domain in 1958.

• Serle, Percival (1949). "Myer, Sidney". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. 

• ADB entry

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1949 edition of Dictionary of Australian Biography from
Project Gutenberg of Australia, which is in the public domain in Australia and the United States of America.