 Edmund Blacket is regarded by descendants of the Blackett family as "a man of the strictest probity with a great love for his profession, who also studied the classics, and was considered the leading authority on Classical Greek in Sydney, loved music, playing the organ at the temporary wooden pro-Cathedral, was a competent wood-carver and an amateur mechanical engineer".Edmund Blacket was born on 25 August 1817 at 85 St Margaret's Hill (later Borough High Street) Southwark, Surrey, England, the seventh child of James Blacket and Margaret Harriot "née" Ralph.His father was a prosperous draper or slopseller of Smithfield, London.