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The timing of the family name change from Maley to O'Malley coincides with the time that King O'Malley was working as an insurance salesman in Northern Tasmania, before he entered politics.
King O'Malley arrived in Australia from the US about 1888. It appears as though he might have been escaping a financial scandal, but his detractors could never prove it. He claimed he was a British subject and therefore eligible to hold his seat in the Australian Parliament. His political enemies tried to prove that he was an American.
Neither his marriage certificate nor death certificate state a date of birth,
O'Malley claimed he was a native of Canada and that he was the son of William and Ellen O'Malley (nee King). He said he was born in Canada on 2 July 1858 at Stanford Farm just across the border from Valley Field.
Records indicate that he had a brother Walter and an Uncle Edward O'Malley who owned a small bank near Wall Street in New York.
He learned banking from his uncle, later becoming an insurance salesman for the Home Insurance Company and later Equitable Life. Apparently in order to pick up a substantial grant of land, he created the "Waterlily Rockbound Church - the Redskin Church of the Cayuse Nation".
Among other claims he made were that he had been married to Rosy Wilmot; that she had died three years after their marriage when he was 28; that his father was killed in the Civil War and that he had been brought up a Catholic but was converted to Wesleyanism.
O'Malley first entered politics in 1896 in Encounter Bay, South Australia but lost the next election. He returned to Tasmania and in 1899 stood for the first election to the Federal House of Representatives. He won the seat and the legend was born.
In 1901 he moved the first formal motion on the establishment of a national capital. In 1912, as the Federal Minister for Home Affairs, he planted the first survey peg at Canberra. Among other things, he is credited as the founder of the Commonwealth Bank.
In 1916, O'Malley who was strongly anti-conscription, had a major run in with Prime Minister Billy Hughes over conscription of young men to the armed services. It led to a division in the caucus and the resignation of a number of Ministers including O'Malley. He died in 1953 with many questions still unanswered.
Can you throw any light on one of the mysteries of Australian politics? Where and when was King O'Malley really born? Was his name really O'Malley or was it Maley? Was he related to the Westbury Maleys?
For more information see King O'Malley 'The American Bounder' by
A R Hoyle
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