Commander John Lamb (1790 – 17 January 1862) was an English-born Australian naval officer, banker and politician. The son of Captain Edward Lamb of the East India Company and Eliza Buchanan, Lamb was appointed to the New South Wales Legislative Council on 10 September 1844.[1] He had a distinguished career with the Royal Navy, beginning at age 11 on his uncle Captain William Buchanan's British Navy warship, the Leviathan. Lamb was noted for his role in several feats over the French and accepted the rank of retired naval commander in May 1846.[2]
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Commander Lamb founded a banking family in Australia as chairman of the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney (now National Australia Bank). Four of his sons also became CBCS directors, namely the bankers and politicians Walter Lamb, Alfred Lamb, Edward Lamb and the banker John de Villiers Lamb. His wife Emma (née Robinson) was the daughter of the deputy chairman of Lloyds Bank. His daughter-in-law by John Lamb, Henrietta Lamb, was the sister of the deputy chairman of the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney, Thomas Smith.[3]
Lamb's partnership with Buchanan ended in 1834 and he renewed his merchant banking business as Lamb & Co. He became a director of many large public companies, including the Sydney Alliance Assurance Co., the Australian Fire and Life Assurance Co. and the Sydney Railroad Co. He was a director and several times chairman of the Commercial Banking Co. of Sydney in 1834–50. In 1851-52 he was a founder and first chairman of the Sydney Chamber of Commerce and of the Sydney Exchange Co.[2]
He was appointed to the New South Wales Legislative Council on 10 September 1844.[1] In 1851 the number of members in the Council was increased from to 54, 18 to be appointed and 36 elected.[5] At the 1851 New South Wales colonial election, Lamb was elected as one of three members for the City of Sydney. He resigned in February 1853.[6] He was again appointed to the Legislative Council in July 1857,[7] for the balance of a five-year term ending on 10 May 1861.[4]
Lamb married Emma (née Robinson), the daughter of John Robinson of Holloway, a London banker and deputy chairman of Lloyds Bank. Lamb died at Darlinghurst on 17 January 1862. He was interred St Judes Cemetery, Randwick, NSW.[4] His sons were the bankers and politicians Walter Lamb, Alfred Lamb, Edward Lamb and the banker John de Villiers Lamb, all of whom held rank as directors of the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney (now NAB). His daughter-in-law by John de Villiers, Henrietta Octavia Lamb, was the sister of the deputy chairman and managing director of the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney, Thomas Whistler Smith, in turn the brother-in-law of John Street, founder of the Street dynasty.[2]
S. J. Butlin, Foundations of the Australian Monetary System, 1788-1851 (Melb, 1953)
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