Thomas John Houghton (24 December 1861 – 30 August 1933) was an English-born Australian politician. He was born in

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

to George Houghton and Frances Fairclough. His family arrived in

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

in 1866. Houghton left school at fourteen to work as a printer's apprentice, and from the age of twenty worked as a printer for

Hansard ''Hansard'' is the traditional name of the transcripts of parliamentary debates in Britain and many Commonwealth countries. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard (1776–1833), a London printer and publisher, who was the first official print ...

. He married Catherine Susanna Kitsch on 31 December 1884 at Grafton; they had three children. Houghton was involved in the labour movement through his membership in a typographical association. Involved in the founding of the Labor Party, he was elected to the

New South Wales Legislative Assembly The New South Wales Legislative Assembly is the lower of the two houses of the Parliament of New South Wales, an Australian state. The upper house is the New South Wales Legislative Council. Both the Assembly and Council sit at Parliament Ho ...

for

Glebe Glebe (; also known as church furlong, rectory manor or parson's close(s))McGurk 1970, p. 17 is an area of land within an ecclesiastical parish used to support a parish priest. The land may be owned by the church, or its profits may be reserved ...

in 1891, but refused to sign the pledge and contested the 1894 election unsuccessfully as an

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

free trade Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. It can also be understood as the free market idea applied to international trade. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold econo ...

r. He was involved in the campaign for Federation, and remained involved in the

Trades and Labour Council A labour council, trades council or industrial council is an association of labour unions or union branches in a given area. Most commonly, they represent unions in a given geographical area, whether at the district, city, region, or provincial or ...

until 1923, when he became an employer. Houghton died at

Artarmon Artarmon is a suburb on the lower North Shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, 9 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Willoughby. History ...

in 1933.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Houghton, Thomas 1861 births 1933 deaths Members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of New South Wales British emigrants to colonial Australia Colony of New South Wales people