Josiah Thomas

Josiah Thomas in the 1920s

Josiah Thomas (born April 28, 1863 in Camborne , Cornwall , England , † February 5, 1933 in Sydney ) was an Australian politician and, among other things, foreign minister of the country.

Life

Thomas was born in Camborne ( Cornwall ), England, went to Mexico with his father as a child and later worked in various mines in Cornwall. In the mid-1880s he traveled to Australia , where he worked in the Broken Hill mining settlement in New South Wales . In 1886 he became a member of a royal commission for the supervision of the mines and worked as Berbgau chief and inspector in 1890. He married his first wife Henrietta Lee Ingleby in July 1889, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.

Thomas was served on the Amalgamated Miners' Association (AMA) committee in July 1891 and became President of the Broken Hill Mining Branch. He was a member of the defense committee during the strike of the mining workers in Broken Hill in 1892. He was dismissed as justice of the peace because he criticized the court in New South Wales heavily, among other things because eight of his fellow members of the committee were arrested for an alleged conspiracy. From now on he got no more work with the mining companies and so he had to give up his previous work, although as President of the AMA he took part in an investigation into several lead poisoning in the mines in 1892 in New South Wales.

Political career

Thomas was elected as a member of the Australian Labor Party for the Alma constituency in 1894, which was responsible for Broken Hill, among other things. He campaigned for an improvement in the working and health conditions of workers. He was against the introduction of an Australian federation because he considered the new referendum to be inadequate.

In 1901, in the country's first independent election, he was elected to the Australian House of Representatives and was given the seat of the Barrier constituency. He was elected to the Postmaster General during the first reign of Andrew Fisher from November 1908 to June 1909, and in 1911 again Postmaster Gernal, but after the unexpected death in office by while Fisher's second term from April 1910 to October Lee Batchelor took he the Office as Foreign Minister until the election defeat in June 1913. In 1916 he went to England as a member of the Imperial Parliamentary Association, which is why he was not in the country during the problem in his Labor Party about the introduction of conscription. Upon his return he was drawn to Billy Hughes ' Nationalist Party of Australia . He was first elected to the Australian Senate in the 1917 elections, but lost his seat in the 1922 elections. In 1925 he was re-elected, but could only hold his seat for another three years until he suffered another election defeat in 1928.

Last years and death

After his political career, Josiah Thomas became a Methodist preacher and campaigned against gambling, alcohol and smoking. For this reason he also supported alcohol prohibition . He worked on the Sydney- based church radio station 2CH . His first wife died in 1901, so he married her sister Clara Ingleby in 1909. One of his two sons with his first wife was killed in the First World War . He died of a heart condition in a suburb of the Sydney metropolis. He left behind his second wife and one son each from his two marriages.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Pennay, Bruce (1990). Thomas, Josiah (1863-1933) . Australian Dictionary of Biography . Australian National University
2. ^ ^{A b} Mr Josiah Thomas (1863-1933) . In: Members of Parliament . Parliament of New South Wales. Retrieved October 2, 2007.