James Munro

James Munro (7 January 1832 – 25 February 1908) was a Scottish born Australian businessman and colonial politician, and the 15th Premier of Victoria. He is best known as one of the leading figures in the land boom of the 1880s and especially the subsequent crash of the early 1890s, where his Christian morals were seen to clash with his business activities. Early life James Munro was born in Armadale, Sutherland, Scotland, to Donald Munro and his wife, Georgina. James Munro's grandparents were Alexander Munro and Barbara Mackay, who according to Australian Representative Men, 2nd edition (1887), and Burke's Colonial Gentry (1891), were a cadet of the Munro of Foulis family, Ross-shire, and a relative of the chief of Clan Mackay respectively. However, Y chromosome DNA testing of paternal descendants and relatives of Alexander has confirmed that he was not descended from the Munros of Foulis. After a primary education at a village school in Armadale, Sutherland, Munro left home for Edinburgh and joined a firm of publishers. In December 1853, he married Jane MacDonald, and had a family of four sons and three daughters. In 1858, he emigrated to Victoria where he set up a printing business. In the 1860s, he expanded into banking and promoting building societies. In 1865, he founded the Victorian Permanent Building Society, of which he was manager for 17 years. By 1870, he was a very wealthy man, and he continued to engage in speculation, particularly in land, after entering politics, as was then the common practice. In 1881, he resigned from the Victorian Permanent Building Society to set up the twin institutions of the Federal Building Society and the Federal Bank of Australia, mostly investing in land, in which he also invested. He was also a leading temperance advocate and prominent in the Presbyterian church. In the boom years of the 1880s, the idea of "temperance hotels", that provided accommodation, dining rooms etc., but did not serve alcohol, was taken up with gusto in Australia, where they were usually called Coffee Palaces, and Munro was leading exponent. In 1886, he was a partner in a company that bought the recently built Grand Hotel (later to become the Hotel Windsor) in Spring Street, and turned it into a coffee palace.