82 Facts About Joseph Lyons

Joseph Aloysius Lyons was an Australian politician who served as the tenth prime minister of Australia, from 1932 until his death in 1939.

Joseph Lyons held office as the inaugural leader of the United Australia Party, having previously led the Tasmanian branch of the Australian Labor Party before the Australian Labor Party split of 1931.

Joseph Lyons served as the 26th premier of Tasmania from 1923 to 1928.

Joseph Lyons was active in the Labor Party from a young age and won election to the Tasmanian House of Assembly in 1909.

Joseph Lyons was Treasurer of Tasmania under John Earle, before replacing Earle as party leader in 1916.

Joseph Lyons pursued moderate reforms and successfully negotiated a constitutional crisis over the powers of the Legislative Council.

In 1929, Joseph Lyons resigned from state parliament to enter federal politics, winning the seat of Wilmot in Labor's landslide victory at the 1929 election.

Joseph Lyons was immediately appointed to cabinet by the new prime minister James Scullin, becoming Postmaster-General of Australia and Minister for Works and Railways.

Joseph Lyons led the UAP to a landslide victory at the 1931 election.

Joseph Lyons's personal popularity was a major factor in the government's re-election in 1934 and 1937; he was the first prime minister to win three federal elections.

Joseph Lyons was his own treasurer until 1935 and oversaw Australia's recovery from the Great Depression.

Joseph Lyons faced a number of foreign-policy challenges, but accelerated Australia's transition towards an independent foreign policy.

Joseph Lyons died of a heart attack in April 1939, becoming the first Australian prime minister to die in office.

Joseph Lyons is the only prime minister from Tasmania and one of two state premiers who have become prime minister, along with George Reid.

Several years after his death, his widow Enid Joseph Lyons became the first woman elected to the House of Representatives.

Joseph Lyons was born in Stanley, Tasmania, on 15 September 1879.

Joseph Lyons was the fifth of eight children born to Ellen and Michael Henry Lyons, both of Irish descent.

Joseph Lyons's mother was born in County Kildare and arrived in Australia in 1857, aged eleven, while his father was born in Tasmania to immigrants from County Galway.

Joseph Lyons was the first prime minister to have an Australian-born parent.

Joseph Lyons had a reputation as a shrewd businessman, frequently buying and selling tracts of land and dabbling in the hotel trade for a period.

Joseph Lyons's sons followed him into farming, and the Lyons family was prominent in the small local community.

When Joseph Lyons was four years old, his father moved the family from Stanley to Ulverstone, where he opened a combined bakery and butcher's shop.

Joseph Lyons had to sell the shop and resort to working as an unskilled labourer; his oldest children took part-time jobs to support the family.

Joseph Lyons began working at the age of nine, as a printer's messenger boy.

Joseph Lyons had begun his education at the Ulverstone State School in 1885, before switching to the local Catholic school in 1887.

In 1895, aged fifteen, Joseph Lyons began working as a pupil-teacher under the monitorial system.

In March 1902, Joseph Lyons transferred to the Midlands, taking charge of the schools at Conara and Llewellyn.

Joseph Lyons was transferred again in July 1905 to Tullah, then a few months later to Smithton, and then in April 1906 to Pioneer.

In 1907, Joseph Lyons moved to Hobart to attend the newly opened Hobart Teachers' College for a year.

Joseph Lyons was then posted to Launceston, teaching at the Glen Dhu and Wellington Square State Schools, as well as briefly acting as headmaster at Perth.

Joseph Lyons came into conflict with the Department of Education on a number of occasions, often complaining about poor working conditions.

Joseph Lyons's superiors disapproved of his political activities, which together with his complaints probably contributed to his frequent transfers and failure to win desirable postings.

Joseph Lyons came from a family that was broadly sympathetic to the Australian labour movement, but without any formal political involvement.

Joseph Lyons helped found a branch of the Workers' Political League during his time in Smithton, but was forced to resign his membership due to restrictions on the involvement of public servants in political activities.

Joseph Lyons was elected to the Tasmanian House of Assembly at the 1909 state election, standing in the six-member Division of Wilmot.

Joseph Lyons was comfortably re-elected in 1912, although he was attacked with a horsewhip during one of his campaign speeches.

Joseph Lyons was somewhat inexperienced with economic matters, and often turned to his friend and colleague Lyndhurst Giblin for advice; they eventually renewed their relationship at federal level during the 1930s.

Less than a month after taking office, Joseph Lyons announced that the government was moving its accounts from the Commercial Bank of Tasmania to the Commonwealth Bank, which had only been established a few years earlier.

Joseph Lyons led the Labor opposition in the Tasmanian Parliament until 1923 when he became Premier of Tasmania, leading a minority ALP government.

Joseph Lyons held office until 1928, serving as Treasurer during the whole period of his premiership.

Joseph Lyons's government was cautious and pragmatic, establishing good relations with business and the conservative government in Canberra, but attracting some criticism from unionists within his own party.

Joseph Lyons chose to ignore the amendments, instead sending the bill directly to the Administrator, Herbert Nicholls, who approved it.

Joseph Lyons came close to death, and stood down from public duties for four months to recover; Allan Guy was acting premier in his absence.

At the 1929 Australian federal election Joseph Lyons ran for the federal seat of Wilmot, covering the same territory as his state seat.

Joseph Lyons was swept into office in Labor's landslide victory under James Scullin.

Joseph Lyons was appointed Postmaster-General and Minister for Works and Railways.

Joseph Lyons became the leading advocate within the government of orthodox finance and deflationary economic policies, and an opponent of the inflationary, proto-Keynesian policies of Treasurer Ted Theodore.

Joseph Lyons was acting Treasurer from August 1930 to January 1931, whilst Scullin was in Britain for the Imperial Conference.

Joseph Lyons announced his plan for recovery in October 1930, insisting on the need to maintain a balanced budget and cut public spending and salaries, although advising lower interest rates and the provision of greater credit for industry.

When Scullin returned in January 1931, he reappointed Theodore to the Cabinet as Treasurer, which Joseph Lyons took as a rejection of his own policies.

Joseph Lyons thus became Leader of the Opposition, with former Nationalist leader John Latham as his deputy.

The UAP realised that Joseph Lyons, an affable family man with the common touch, was a far more electorally appealing figure than the aloof Latham.

Joseph Lyons held frequent press conferences and personally briefed journalists, editors, and newspaper proprietors to gain favourable publicity.

Joseph Lyons adhered to the principles of "sound finance", opposing inflation and government debt and stressing the importance of balanced budgets and orderly loan repayments.

Joseph Lyons appointed himself Treasurer of Australia, the first non-Labor prime minister to do so and the first incoming prime minister to do so since Andrew Fisher in 1914.

Joseph Lyons had earlier offered the treasurership to Ben Chifley as an inducement to leave the Labor Party, but Chifley declined.

Joseph Lyons appointed experienced assistant treasurers, initially Stanley Bruce and later Walter Massy-Greene and Richard Casey, who eventually succeeded as Treasurer in 1935.

The Joseph Lyons government's plan for recovery was a reprise of the Premiers' Plan which had split the Labor Party.

Joseph Lyons spent two weeks campaigning for the "No" vote with George Pearce and Tom Brennan.

In July 1933, Joseph Lyons established the Commonwealth Grants Commission to provide impartial advice about the distribution of federal government grants to the states; it remains in existence.

Joseph Lyons had no previous experience in international relations or diplomacy, but as prime minister took a keen interest in foreign relations and exerted significant influence over the government's foreign policy.

Joseph Lyons's government pursued what has been called a policy of "appeasement and rearmament".

Joseph Lyons had pacifist leanings and was keen to avoid a repeat of the First World War.

Joseph Lyons was particularly concerned with Anglo-Italian and Anglo-Japanese relations, where his goal was to "influence British policy in a manner conducive to Australian interests".

Joseph Lyons was prime minister during the Edward VIII abdication crisis of 1936.

Joseph Lyons strongly opposed the proposed marriage to Wallis Simpson, a view shared by his cabinet; it is unclear if he was initially aware how deep the king's feelings were.

Joseph Lyons later telegraphed the king asking him not to abdicate, and after the event gave a speech in parliament announcing his regret at the king's decision.

Joseph Lyons is the only Australian prime minister to have held office during the reigns of three monarchs, and the only prime minister to serve throughout a monarch's entire reign.

On 5 April 1939, Joseph Lyons suffered a heart attack while being driven from Melbourne to Sydney.

Joseph Lyons was rushed to St Vincent's Hospital, Darlinghurst, in a critical condition.

Joseph Lyons's body was transported to his home town of Devonport aboard HMAS Vendetta.

Joseph Lyons was re-interred in the new Mersey Vale Memorial Park in 1969, where he was joined by his wife in 1981.

Joseph Lyons was the first Australian prime minister to die in office.

Joseph Lyons was sworn in by Governor-General Lord Gowrie a few hours after Lyons's death.

On 28 April 1915, Joseph Lyons married Enid Burnell, the daughter of a family friend; she was almost 18 years his junior.

Joseph Lyons had begun courting her in 1912, when she was 15.

Joseph Lyons broke off their relationship for reasons unknown, but they remained firm friends; Bailey never married and kept the love letters they exchanged for the rest of her life.

Joseph Lyons was one of the most genuinely popular men to hold the office of prime minister, and his death caused widespread grief.

Joseph Lyons is the only person in Australian history to have been prime minister, premier of a state, treasurer and leader of the opposition in both the Federal Parliament and a state parliament.

Joseph Lyons is the only prime minister to have come from Tasmania.

Joseph Lyons was appointed to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in June 1932, a traditional honour for Australian prime ministers.

Joseph Lyons was formally sworn of the council when he visited London in March 1935.