Sir Alexander James Peacock (11 June 1861 – 7 October 1933) was an Australian politician who served as the 20th Premier of Victoria. Early Years Peacock was born of Scottish descent at Creswick, the first Victorian Premier born after the gold rush of the 1850s and the attainment of self-government in Victoria. He was the eldest of five children of James Henry Peacock, draper and later tailor from Suffolk, England, and his wife Mary Jane Murphy from Cork, Ireland. His primary education was at Creswick State School, and his secondary at Mrs. Fiddian’s Grammar School, as a pupil-teacher – an apprentice teacher taking classes by day and studying by night. He told an interviewer in 1902 that his mother ‘with warm maternal affection, endeavoured to give her son the best education obtainable’, but that his father’s business suffered ‘heavy losses’, forcing him to give up plans to study at Melbourne University and to take a job in a grocery, where he worked from 9.00 in the morning to 8.00 at night. His interviewer commented that ‘This short, sharp experience made a vivid impression upon him, and doubtless formed the flame of rebellion against sweaters and sweating’. Peacock’s lack of tertiary qualifications did not hamper his career. He found employment as a junior clerk in a legal mining manager’s office in Creswick – another kind of apprenticeship. After a few years he established his own firm, managing the legal affairs of some of the richest gold-mining companies in Victoria. By 1889 he was president of the Legal Managers’ Institute of Victoria, and he remained in the business for most of his life. He was distantly related to the family of the politician Andrew Peacock. He was prominent in the Australian Natives' Association and the movement for Australian federation in the 1880s and '90s. He was a man whom it was difficult to dislike. A biographer has described him as ‘tall, imposing, jovial and moustached’, a man who ‘did all the right things as representative of the district, had a suave word for everybody, patted children on the head and was extremely popular’. He was famous for having what Webb called a laugh ‘of appalling noisiness’. Entry in Parliament In 1889 Peacock was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly for the seat of Clunes and Allendale, near Ballarat, which he held for 43 years. Although he was a moderate liberal, he was