The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Brownless, Anthony Colling
Brownless, Anthony Colling, C.M.G., LL.D., M.D., F.R.C.S., Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, is the only son of the late Anthony Brownless, of Paynetts House, and Bockingfold Manor, Goudhurst, Kent. After studying for the medical profession at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London, and at the University of Liege, he was admitted M.R.C.S. of London in 1841, and M.D. of St. Andrews in 1846. Having practised for some years as a physician in London, Dr. Brownless arrived in Victoria in Dec. 1852, and was soon afterwards elected Physician to the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum, and in 1854 Physician to the Melbourne Hospital—a post which he held for twelve years, being appointed a Life Governor and Consulting Physician on his retirement. In June 1855 the Melbourne University gave him the diploma of M.D., this being the first occasion on which the degree was conferred by that University, in which Dr. Brownless founded the medical school, and of which he was annually elected Vice-Chancellor for twenty-nine years, from 1858 to 1887; when he was elected Chancellor, in succession to Dr. Moorhouse. Dr. Brownless holds the honorary degree of LL.D. of the Universities of St. Andrews and Melbourne, and in 1884 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Dr. Brownless was made, a Knight of St. Gregory the Great by the late Pope in 1870, and a Knight Commander of the Order of Pius, conferring nobility, by Leo. XIII. in 1883. Dr. Brownless, who was created C.M.G. in May 1888, has been twice married: first, in 1842, to Ellen, daughter of the late William Hawker, M.D., of Charing, Kent, and Liége, Belgium, formerly surgeon in the Grenadier Guards, who died in 1846; and secondly, in 1852, to Anne Jane, eldest daughter of the late Captain William Hamilton, of Eden, co. Donegal, Ireland, an officer in the Rifle Brigade, who served with distinction in the Peninsular War.