John Withington
Australian politician (1865-1944)

John Swann Withington (12 October 1865 – 5 May 1944) was an Australian politician.
He was born in Bury in Lancashire to tailor Henry Withington and Elizabeth Mather. He received a secondary education but ran away to sea, arriving in Sydney in 1883. He moved to Orange, where he worked as a mason and later as a fuel, line and cement merchant. On 26 December 1891 he married Selina Cox, with whom he had two children. He was an alderman at Orange from 1905 to 1910, serving as mayor from 1909 to 1910. In 1907 he was elected in a by-election to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of Blayney, representing the Liberal Party; he was defeated in the general election later that year. He moved to Sydney around 1920 and was an alderman at Ryde from 1927 to 1931 and from 1935 to 1937. Withington died in Sydney in 1944.
The public source identifies “John Withington” as australian politician (1865-1944). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around John, Withington and Australian.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 5, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q19662580. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1865, 1944, 1883 and 1891.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Withington” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.