The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Bramston, John
Bramston, John, C.B., B.A., D.C.L., Assistant Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, second son of the late T. W. Bramston, M.P. of Skreens, Essex, was born on Nov. 14th, 1832, and educated at Winchester, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1854, becoming Fellow of All Souls' in the same university in the following year, and D.C.L. in 1863. He entered at the Middle Temple in Nov. 1854, and was called to the bar in June 1857. He went to Queensland in 1859 as private secretary to Sir George Bowen, the first governor, and held that post for two years, when he resigned. From 1863 to 1866 he sat in the Legislative Council, and was a member without portfolio of the first Ministry formed by his friend Mr. (now Sir) Robert Herbert from July 1863 to Feb. 1866, acting temporarily as Attorney-General from August to Sept. 1865. Subsequently he returned to England, and remained for two years, acting in 1867 as Assistant Boundary Commissioner for Devon and Cornwall under the Reform Act of that year. Returning to Queensland in 1868, he represented Burnett in the Legislative Assembly from April 1871 to Dec. 1873, and was Attorney-General in the Palmer Ministry from May 1870 to Jan. 1874, when he resigned to accept the same office in Hong Kong, where he also acted as judge. In June 1876 Mr. Bramston was appointed to his present post as Assistant Under Secretary of State in the Colonial Office, being employed on a mission to Berlin in connection with the Angra Pequena negotiations in July 1886, in which year he was created C.B. Mr. Bramston married, on Dec. 12th, 1872, Eliza Isabella, daughter of the late Rev. Harry Vane Russell. He was appointed Registrar of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 1892.