John Robert Sinclair

Sir John Robert Sinclair (1850 – 3 December 1940) was a lawyer and a member of the New Zealand Legislative Council from 1907 to 1914, and from 1918 to 1932.

Sinclair was born in Anglesey in Wales in 1850. His father was Scottish and had moved to Anglesey in the 1830s. He received his early education in Wales before coming with his family to Port Chalmers in New Zealand in the early 1860s. Sinclair continued his secondary school education in Dunedin and the University of Otago, from where he graduated in 1875.

Based in Dunedin, he worked as a solicitor for the Dunedin City Council, other municipal bodies, and the Dunedin Drainage Board. Prior to his appointment to the Legislative Council, he took no part in political life, but had been chairman of the Otago High Schools Board, and held several directorships with finance companies. He represented New Zealand on the Dominions Royal Commission from 1912 to 1917. and the king passed the letters patent on 6 February 1918. He died on 3 December 1940, aged 90.