SMITH, ROBERT BURDETT (1837-1895), solicitor and politician, was born on 25 August 1837 in Sydney, baptized Robert Lloyd, twin son of John Lloyd Smith and his wife Mary Ann, née Salmon. John, a native of Northumberland, had been convicted of horse-stealing at Edinburgh on 8 January 1830 and sentenced to be transported for seven years, arriving in Sydney in the York on 7 February 1831. Mary Ann, whom he had married with the governor's permission on 2 February 1835, had come free to the colony in the Princess Victoria on 4 February 1834. With his brother-in-law Thomas Armitage Salmon and later on his own, John traded as a carcass butcher in 1838-43; but on 11 April, bankrupt, he was convicted in Port Phillip of forgery and sentenced to transportation for the term of his natural life.

Robert was educated at W. T. Cape's school, studied classics and literature ...

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Source:

Australian Dictionary of Biography