James Mirams (2 January 1839 – 21 June 1916) was an Australian businessman and politician who was jailed for fraud. Early years Mirams was born in Lambeth, London, the son of a Congregational minister, Revd. James Mirams, who had been a missionary in Berbice, British Guiana. His father was in England in 1840, where he attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. Mirams jr. attended a school in Chishill, Essex. Professional life Mirams became an ironmonger and had a business in Royston, but migrated to Melbourne in 1857, after his father accepted the position of minister at the Independent Church, Collins Street. Mirams unsuccessfully tried dairy farming at Braybrook. He then became a schoolteacher at Fitzroy, and later a bookseller and stationer in Collingwood. In 1874 Mirams was the promoter and secretary of the Premier Permanent Building, Land, and Investment Association. In the boom years of the 1880s, he became involved in numerous speculative ventures, such as the Freehold Farms Co. and the Essendon Land and Tramway Co. Ltd. A Sabbatarian and a leading temperance advocate, he was also the co-promoter of the ornately designed Federal Coffee Palace, which was opened in time for the 1888 Centennial Exhibition. Political involvement After four unsuccessful attempts in the previous five years, Mirams was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as the member for Collingwood in 1876, serving until 1886. He was subsequently the member for Williamstown from 1887 to 1889. Opposed to plural voting, an advocate of payment of members and of the creation of uniform electorates, he was a founder of the Liberal party, and a committed follower of the radical premier Graham Berry. Mirams was a consistent critic of the Legislative Council during the constitutional crisis in 1877-80. A committed protectionist, Mirams was secretary of the Central Council of the Victorian Protection League in 1875-76 and of the National Reform and Protection League in 1877. The Bulletin described him as one of the most 'uncompromising democrats' of the 1880s. Mirams political fortunes did not prosper, however. He was probably too doctrinaire for a Liberal party which consisted of a coalition of interests. He fell out with Berry over the compromise which settled the constitutional crisis, and he condemned the formation of the coalition Conservative-Liberal ministry in 1883. Financial ruin At the height of the Land Boom in the late 1880s, it was revealed that the Premier Building Society had borrowed