On Thursday evening (18 May 1865), a meeting of members of the Working Man’s Club was held in Trinity School-room. His Worship the Mayor presided. The Club had then 230 enrolled members, and most of them were present. The rules prepared by the provisional committee were unanimously adopted. His Worship the Mayor (Adye Douglas, Esq.) was elected President.

Sir Adye Douglas (1815-1906), lawyer and politician was born on 31 May 1815 at Thorpe-next-Norwich, England. He sailed from London in the Louisa Campbell and arrived at Launceston in January 1839. After being admitted to practice in the Supreme Court, in 1842 he founded a legal firm that continues to operate today. Elected as one of the first aldermen in the Launceston Municipal Council he served as mayor in 1865-66 and 1880-82. He was also elected to represent Launceston in the first House of Assembly in 1856 and later served as Premier of Tasmania from 1884 until 1886 where he resigned and became Agent-General in London.

He represented Tasmania at the Sydney convention from which the Federal Council of Australasia was evolved. At its first session in Hobart, Douglas predicted a ‘United States of Australasia, independent of the lieelt island in the Northern Hemisphere’. Called to order, he reminded members of the toasts of forty years ago to the ‘Australian Republic’.