James Rowell was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

-born Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n politician. Born in Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

, he migrated to Australia as a child and was educated in state schools. He served in the military 1877-1917 before becoming aide-de-camp

Aide-de-camp

An aide-de-camp is a personal assistant, secretary, or adjutant to a person of high rank, usually a senior military officer or a head of state...

 to the Governor-General

Governor-General of Australia

The Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia is the representative in Australia at federal/national level of the Australian monarch . He or she exercises the supreme executive power of the Commonwealth...

. He was a horticulturalist, and served on West Torrens Council

City of West Torrens

The City of West Torrens is a Local Government Area in the western suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. Since the 1970s the area was mainly home to many open spaces and parks, however after the mid-1990s the LGA became more residential.-Suburbs:...

. In 1917, he was appointed to the Australian Senate

Australian Senate

The Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives. Senators are popularly elected under a system of proportional representation. Senators are elected for a term that is usually six years; after a double dissolution, however,...

 as a Nationalist

Nationalist Party of Australia

The Nationalist Party of Australia was an Australian political party. It was formed on 17 February 1917 from a merger between the conservative Commonwealth Liberal Party and the National Labor Party, the name given to the pro-conscription defectors from the Australian Labor Party led by Prime...

 Senator for South Australia

South Australia

South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...

, filling the casual vacancy caused by the resignation of William Story

William Story (Australian politician)

William Harrison Story was an Australian politician. Born in Adelaide, he was educated at state schools before becoming a stonemason and bricklayer. He served as President of the Operative Masons and Bricklayers Society and the Adelaide Trades and Labour Council, and was mayor of Norwood and...

, who was contesting the House of Representatives

Australian House of Representatives

The House of Representatives is one of the two houses of the Parliament of Australia; it is the lower house; the upper house is the Senate. Members of Parliament serve for terms of approximately three years....

. He contested the 1922 election

Australian federal election, 1922

Federal elections were held in Australia on 16 December 1922. All 75 seats in the House of Representatives, and 19 of the 36 seats in the Senate were up for election. The incumbent Nationalist Party of Australia led by Prime Minister of Australia Billy Hughes lost its majority...

 as a candidate for the Liberal Party

Liberal Party (1922)

The Liberal Party, also known as the Liberal Union or the Liberal Union Party, was a short-lived political party in Australia that operated mainly in 1922. The party was formed by disaffected Nationalists, principally Thomas Ashworth and Charles Merrett, who opposed the leadership of Prime...

, which was a group of disaffected Nationalists opposed to the leadership of Prime Minister

Prime Minister of Australia

The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia is the highest minister of the Crown, leader of the Cabinet and Head of Her Majesty's Australian Government, holding office on commission from the Governor-General of Australia. The office of Prime Minister is, in practice, the most powerful...

 Billy Hughes

Billy Hughes

William Morris "Billy" Hughes, CH, KC, MHR , Australian politician, was the seventh Prime Minister of Australia from 1915 to 1923....

; he was defeated. Rowell died in 1941.