Louis Smith

Who was Louis Smith?

Louis Lawrence Smith was an Australian politician.

Probably born in London to theatre proprietor Edward Tyrell Smith and Madeline Hanette Gengoult, he attended St Saviour's Grammar School and the Ecole de Medicine in Paris before entering Westminster Hospital. In 1852 he moved to Victoria as surgeon of the Oriental, and after briefly mining gold established a popular unconventional medical practice in Melbourne. In 1859 he was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as the member for South Bourke, serving until 1865. He served again as the member for Richmond and Mornington. From 1881 to 1883 he was a minister without portfolio. In 1883, following the end of his first marriage to Ellen that produced six children, he married Marion Jane Higgins at East Melbourne, with whom he had five children. Smith died in Melbourne in 1910.