H. D. Gouge

Herbert Dillon Gouge was South Australia's first Government Actuary.

History

Gouge was born in Coventry and came to South Australia in 1850 with his father, and was educated at J. L. Young's Adelaide Educational Institution, then at St. Peter's College, where he proved a brilliant student.
He exhibited a sketch Horse's Head with the South Australian Society of Arts at Adelaide in 1863, possibly as a student of Charles Hill.
In the late 1860s he supervised construction of the Granite Island causeway for Borrow & Gouge, his father's contracting business.
He worked as a land and commission agent in Wallaroo, then from 1868 to 1877 at Mannum, then in Adelaide. In 1885 he was licensed as an assessor under the Land and Income Tax Act.
He was appointed Public Actuary on 16 March 1894, and was responsible for creating the office and its procedures.
He was a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, and was elected a corresponding member of the Statistical Society of Paris, on the nomination of M. Bellom, engineer with the French Department of Mines, and M. Le Nasseur, the President of the Society.
He married Emily Mills on 31 May 1870; they had no children.