East Melbourne, Gipps Street 015, Faraday House

The 1870 Rate Books list John Kelly as the owner, and describe the house as having '6 rooms bathroom 2 kitchens servants room and shed'. Thereafter it is listed simply as 8 rooms. In 1873 William Sydney Gibbons appears for the first time as the owner. He lived there with his family until his death in 1917. Gibbons was an analyst, and for many years, the government analyst. He arrived in Melbourne in 1845. In 1854 he founded the Victorian Institute for Advancement of Science (later Royal Society of Victoria). He wrote for the 'Herald', and helped found the 'Melbourne Punch'. He was widely published in scientific literature, and was a Fellow of the Chemical Society and the Royal Microscopical Society. One of his neighbours writing many years later remembered him as 'a very fierce looking individual, with a long whitish-grey beard and a ferocious-looking eye carrying a very heavy walking-stick, the largest I have ever seen, with a large egg-shaped rounded head nearly as big as a pineapple'.

In 1890 the house had the street number 13.

Gibbons' will, date 20 July 1908, describes the house as it was at that time: The house ... demands some consideration, having got out of condition for want of time - by repair, and through the devastations of the Board of Works. ... The most serious injuries to the house are due to the undermining of it on both sides by the Board of Works in its sewerage operations and the removal of the earth taken out which ought to have been rammed in again. Consequently the walls are cracked in many places and the brick ceilings loosened and thrown down by the same cause assisted in the latter case by leakage from loosened slates.'

He deemed that it was unsellable in its present condition and that it should be put into lettable order, and let until such time that the rent money would be enough to put it into perfect order for sale. According to his will it seems Gibbons lost a lot of money in the 1890s crash and was living in straitened circumstances.

It is likely that Gibbons named the house after Michael Faraday (1791-1867), a British chemist and physicist who contributed significantly to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. In February 1833 Faraday was appointed Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution in London. Many other awards and honours followed.

In latter times Faraday House was, for many years, the home of Johnny Ladd, a well known and loved entertainer, who died in 2004. His ashes were believed to have been scattered underneath a 130 year cherry tree at the back of the property. A year later the new owners disposed of the tree along with the rear section of the house. It still awaits rebuilding (2009).