In the early 1920s, John Hugh Sutton entered the University of Melbourne with a scholarship. In 1923 and 1924, he obtained first-class honours in Latin and Greek. He was a Classics scholar and an outstanding student.
It was a Friday evening, 6 March 1925, when the 19-year-old Sutton was driving his motorcycle down the Trinity College driveway where he hit a tree and died.
One of the pre-eminent classicists in Victoria and the Trinity College’s sub-Warden, R.F. Blackwood, said about Sutton’s death the following day:
“I consider that by the death of John Sutton last night, Australia has lost one of its most promising literary personalities … I have had experience with many brilliant men who have passed through Trinity College, but I venture to say that none was so able as John Sutton.”
After their son’s death, George Henry Sutton and Jessie Campbell Sutton funded the establishment through which John Sutton will be always remembered. The legacy of the young scholar was thus preserved in the most appropriate way – through inaugurating the John Hugh Sutton Classical Museum at the University of Melbourne, and by establishing the J.H. Sutton memorial scholarship at Melbourne Grammar School, that young Sutton attended. The scholarship has been awarded annually since 1925.

The significant sum of £500, given to the university by Sutton’s parents, was used to purchase classical artefacts for collection in the memory of their son.
The important antiquities collection, honouring the gifted classics scholar, is now showing at the University of Melbourne Ian Potter Museum of Art. The exhibition features a variety of classical coins, vases, terracotta artefacts and bronzes, acquired through auction rooms and antiquities dealers in Britain, and the excavation sites of Greece.
“The statistical yearbook for 1925 shows that the average male adult full-time wage in 1924 was £245 per annum. So Sutton’s bequest of £500 was just over double two-year’s average wages. Using corresponding figures for 2012, today this would be the equivalent of just over $200,000,” curator of the exhibition, Dr Andrew Jamieson, tells Neos Kosmos.
The majority of artefacts was acquired from excavation sites in Greece – from Attica, Peloponnesus, Crete, Lesbos – and dates back to as early as 1250-1200 BCE. The John Hugh Sutton Collection signified the genesis of the Melbourne University’s Classics and Archeology Collection that is still being used as an educational tool for its students.
“In 1926, upon acceptance of the bequest, the Sutton family enforced a condition that the donation must be expended within three years. The University agreed and Professor Scutt, head of Classics at the University of Melbourne, enlisted archaeologist and friend C.T. Seltman, a noted Cambridge University numismatist and classicist, to assist with the purchases. In October 1928 the first artefacts were added to the Sutton Collection – an exquisite collection of Greek coins that saw Scutt and Seltman sail to Greece and England with the intention of adding to the growing collection. They covered an area from Britain to Rhodes and Carthage to Lesbos.”
Professors Scutt and Seltman were responsible for the development of the collection. Seltman became a fixture at auction rooms and antiquities shops in Britain and the excavation sites of Greece, buying a wide variety of objects for the collection.
The Sutton bequest was expended by the end of 1929, and the University was in possession of a good coin collection, fine vases, figurines such as a terracotta dancing doll, plaster casts and other objects.
Today, the John Hugh Sutton Collection includes: 93 coins, 20 vases, 10 figurines, three metal objects, six plaster casts and reproductions, and 71 electrotype coins, and continues to be not only an aid to research but an important teaching tool. Whilst the objects are precious, Classics and Archaeology professors regularly use these actual antiquities in the teaching of students.
“Actual objects from the period studied give a sense of reality and immediacy to what may seem a remote past disconnected from modern life. It also allows the students to examine the antiquities as a primary source, free from the interpretation of other commentators,” Dr Jamieson says.
The John Hugh Sutton coin collection was exhibited once, in the Old Arts Building in 1930, and has never been shown again in total until now.
“All the objects in the John Hugh Sutton Collection are related to ancient Greece. In selecting objects for the collection, Seltman chose representative types – an indication he was clearly mindful that coins were to form part of a university teaching collection. The significance of the John Hugh Sutton Collection is enhanced through the historical and cultural association with Charles Seltman – who at the time of the acquisition was one of the most important and internationally regarded authorities of ancient Greek art and coinage,” Dr Jamieson tells Neos Kosmos.
The exhibition, featuring the John Hugh Sutton Collection as well as historical material related to the life of John Sutton, is showing until 13 October 2013, at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, Swanston Street (between Elgin & Faraday street), Parkville. For more information, contact 03 8344 5148 or visit www.art-museum.unimelb.edu.au.