Benjamin Lee (Australian politician)


Benjamin Lee was an English-born Australian politician.
He was born at Ampthill in Bedfordshire to Benjamin Lee and Lucy Ann Poulton. His family migrated to Sydney in 1829, and Lee was educated at The King's School, Parramatta. He assisted his father on the family properties and in 1857 established himself as a draper at Maitland. On 21 July 1856 he married Sarah Amelia Stephens, with whom he had nine children. From 1861 to 1874 he was chairman of the Hunter River New Steam Navigation Company, and he was also a squatter and a police magistrate at Bathurst. In 1864 he was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for West Maitland, serving until his resignation in 1874. In 1875, he was a local mining warden, and in 1881 a coroner. In 1890 he was a stipendiary magistrate. Lee died at Annandale in 1917.