People Australia

James Stewart, by Swiss Studios, 190?

National Library of Australia, 23357739

James Charles Stewart (1850-1931) journalist, trade union official and Australian Senator 

Birth: 7 September 1850 at Gorton, near Granton-on-Spey, Morayshire, Scotland, son of Angus Stewart (1825-1887), farmer, and his second wife Jessie, née Cruickshank (1823-1876). Marriage: 7 May 1880 at Oban, Argyllshire, to Mary, née McIntyre, late Black (1857-1926), a widow with two sons. They had three daughters and one son. Death 19 December 1931 at Strathpine, Queensland. Religion: Presbyterian. 

• Educated at Granton parish school. Was a farm worker from 1863 to 1870, then worked in a solicitor’s office at Inverness, returned to labouring, then worked for the Caledonian Railway Company. He was a coal merchant in Glasgow for 5 years. Leaving his family in Scotland, he arrived at Rockhampton, Queensland, in 1888. Was an Emu Park railway worker, fencer and farm worker. Also employed in Lakes Creek meat works.
• His wife was described as a laundress in Helensburgh in the 1891 Scotland census and was living with her four children in Glasgow in 1901. She died in Glasgow in 1926.
• James was editor and manager of Peoples’ Newspaper Rockhampton in 1893. Sometime secretary of Lake’s Creek Labour Union and of the Butchers’ Union. He was a member of the Shop and Factories Commission, Brisbane. 1891. Secretary of the Rockhampton Council, Australian Labor Federation.
• Contested Queensland seat of Rockhampton North in 1893. Member of the central executive of the Queensland Labor Party in 1898-1899, and 1910-1916. Alderman, North Rockhampton Borough Council 1892.
• Member of the Legislative Assembly, Rockhampton North from 1896 to 1901 (resigned).
• Elected to the Australian Senate in 1901. Held the seat until 1917, when he was defeated. Member, Joint Committee of Public Accounts 1914-1917; Secretary, Parliamentary Party and Senate Whip 1901-08. Member of the ALP executive in 1914-1917.
• Moved to Yeppoon 1916, and in 1927 to Strathpine, where he retired. Nominated as a candidate for Nationalist party in 1920.
• Was a grand deacon of the United Grand Lodge of Freemasons of Queensland.
• Cause of death: stone in bladder (6 years), septic infection of the kidney (3 months) uraemia and toxaemia (7 days).

Sources
Duncan Bruce Waterson, Biographical register of the Queensland Parliament 1860-1929 (Sydney, 2001); Worker (Brisbane), 28 June 1902 p.7; biography by Joan Rydon in Biographical Dictionary of the Australian Senate: https://biography.senate.gov.au/james-charles-stewart/