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The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Leeper, Alexander

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753597The Dictionary of Australasian Biography — Leeper, AlexanderPhilip Mennell

Leeper, Alexander, M.A., LL.D., Warden of Trinity College, Melbourne University, is the eldest surviving son of the Rev. Alexander Leeper, D.D., Incumbent of St. Audoen's, and Canon of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, by Catherine, eldest daughter of William Henry Porter, M.D., F.R.C.S., late President of the Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, and sister of Sir George H. Porter, Bart., D.L., Surgeon-in-Ordinary to the Queen. He was born on June 3rd, 1848, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he took a first classical scholarship in his Junior Freshman year, the Berkeley Gold Medal, a Vice-Chancellor's prize, and several other distinctions in Classics. He graduated B.A. in 1871, and M.A. in 1875. He proceeded to Oxford in 1872, where he became Scholar, Exhibitioner, and Prizeman of St. John's College, and proxime accessit for a Gaisford university prize. He took also a first class in the School of Classical Honours in 1874. He arrived in Victoria in 1875, and was appointed Warden of Trinity College, Melbourne, in 1876. He married on Dec. 30th, 1879, Adeline Marian, daughter of the late Sir George Wigram Allen, K.C.M.G., of Toxteth Park, Sydney, N.S.W. He has had the degrees of M.A. and LL.D. conferred on him stip. con. by Dublin University. Dr. Leeper was elected in 1880 a member of the Council of Melbourne University, with a life-tenure, but resigned in 1887. He was appointed a trustee of the Public Library in 1887, and has twice been appointed Classical Examiner to the University of New Zealand, and twice Classical Examiner to the University of Adelaide, as well as Examiner-in-Chief to the Tasmanian Council of Education (1885). Dr. Leeper is author of "A Guide to Classical Reading," with the collaboration of Professor H. A. Strong (G. Robertson, Melbourne), and of "A Translation of Juvenal" (Macmillan & Co., London. Second edition, 1890).