Robert Butler

Robert John Cuthbert Butler (born Robert Thomas Poxon; 20 April 1889 – 8 November 1950) was an Australian politician. He was the Labor member for Lockyer in the Legislative Assembly of Queensland from 1918 to 1920.

Early life Butler was born on 20 April 1889 in Pembury, Kent, England. He was the third of seven children born to of Emma (née Batchelor) and John Albert Poxon. His father was a tenant farmer who grew hops, but moved the family to Canterbury after being bankrupted in 1896 and worked as a baker.

Butler is recorded on the 1911 UK census as a tailor living with his parents. However, by the end of the year he had moved to London, where he changed his surname from "Poxon" and reinvented himself as a 28-year-old journalist rather than a 22-year-old apprentice tailor. Butler left England in December 1911 and worked his way to Australia on a steamer. He worked at the Catherine Hill coal mine in New South Wales, where he participated in a strike, before moving to Brisbane in 1914. He became a librarian at the Queensland Museum in September 1915.