The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Monro, Sir David
Monro, Sir David, K.C.M.G., M.D., was the fourth son of Alexander Monro, M.D., Professor of Anatomy in Edinburgh University, by his first wife, Maria, daughter of the late James Carmichael Smyth, and was born in 1813. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy and Edinburgh University, where he graduated M.D. in 1836. Sir David, who was knighted in 1866, afterwards studied medicine in the schools of Paris, Berlin and Vienna. He was one of the earliest settlers in Nelson, N.Z., under the New Zealand Co., and took a prominent part in the agitation for a constitution before 1853. Having been a member of the Legislative Council of the Province of New Munster in 1849, he sat in the first New Zealand Parliament in 1854 for a Nelson constituency, and succeeded Sir Charles Clifford as Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1861, being re-elected in 1866. In 1871 he was unseated as the result of the first election petition adjudicated on in the colony. Sir David married in 1845 Dinah, daughter of John Seeker, of Widford, Oxfordshire. He died on Feb. 17th, 1877.