Wirth Family

NB a Google search will provide a lot of information including film footage of the Circus.

Close to the city on St Kilda Road is Hamer Hall and the Arts precinct. Before this was built the area had a close connection with Wesley. In 1907 Wirth Brothers Circus took over from a smaller one and occupied this site until 1957.Close by was a fashionable meeting place Prince’s Court, which had an open-air theatre and Japanese Tea House. The Chronicles of the early 1900s are filled with fund raising events held at Prince’s Court. 

The most exciting activity was the circus. Established by the family of Johannes and Sarah Wirth, it was their children, primarily two sons George and Phillip who expanded the Show and traveled extensively both nationally and internationally. There were lions and tigers, horses and elephants, acrobats and trapeze artists. They regularly traveled to Sydney, Brisbane and New Zealand. Wirth’s circus was the only one allowed to operate during WWII.

But how to educate the children? The two sons of Philip Wirth boarded at Wesley. Phillip Dudley George started here in 1920 aged 7 into Form Lower Prep. His address was given as Wirth’s Park Princes Bridge. His brother came 2 years later in 1922, aged 5. Despite his young age he too was a boarder. They were athletic and involved in sport, and George was Vice Captain of the Prep Football team.

They were popular boys and their classmates remembered them fondly in later years. They were both supporters of the School, holding life time membership of the OWCA, with George being based in Sydney. Phillip and his sisters ran the circus until a fire destroyed the Melbourne Olympia building, and it finally closed for good in 1963.