Randolph Bedford

• Name — Randolph Bedford • Office1 — Member of the Queensland Legislative Council • Term Start1 — 12 October 1917 • Term End1 — 21 February 1918 • Term Start2 — 27 May 1918 • Term End2 — 23 March 1922 • Constituency Am3 — Warrego • Assembly3 — Queensland Legislative • Term Start3 — 13 October 1923 • Term End3 — 8 September 1937 • Predecessor3 — Harry Coyne • Successor3 — Himself • Term Start4 — 4 December 1937 • Term End4 — 7 July 1941 • Predecessor4 — Himself • Successor4 — Harry O'Shea • Born — 27 June 1868 • Birthplace — Camperdown, New South Wales, Australia • Died — 7 July 1941 • Place of death — Brisbane, Queensland, Australia • Birth Name — George Randolph Bedford • Party — Labor • Spouse — Mary Henrietta Arrowsmith (m. 1889; separated 1912), Ada Billings (partner 1915–41) • Occupation — Autobiographer, hospital owner, journalist and politician

Bedford was born in Camperdown, Sydney, the son of Alfred Bedford, who migrated from Yorkshire, England in 1859 and obtained work as a house painter. He was educated at the Newtown state school. At the age of 14, he worked with a Sydney solicitors firm as an office-boy. At 16 years of age he worked in the western district of New South Wales, shooting rabbits. He carried copies of Carlyle's French Revolution, Shakespeare and the Bible. He worked for a year as a clerk in Hay and joined up with a repertory company run by Edmund Duggan, in Wagga Wagga.

A comprehensive bibliography of Bedford's work was published in 1982. With Australian authors Henry Lawson and Victor Daley et al., he was a member of the elite Dawn and Dusk Club.

In 1917, Bedford entered the Queensland Legislative Council, on a platform to secure its abolition (which occurred in 1922). In 1923, he was elected as Labor candidate to the Queensland Legislative Assembly for Warrego. In 1937, he unsuccessfully ran to represent the Division of Maranoa in the Australian House of Representatives. He was an ardent Protectionist, and decried the way the wealth of Australia was exported to pay for shoddy goods which could have been produced locally. Bedford died on 7 July 1941 and was cremated at Mount Thompson crematorium.

• White Australia (1909) • Lady of the Pluck-Up (1911) • The Boss Cockie (1920)

• True Eyes and the Whirlwind (1903) • The Snare of Strength (1905) • Sops of Wine (1909) • Billy Pagan Mining Engineer (1911) • The Mates of Torres (1911) • The Lady of the Pickup (1911) • The Silver Star (1917) • Aladdin and the Boss Cockie (1919) Short Story A Samaritan of the Riverine, in [Adventure Magazine, vol 1 No 4, 1911)

• Explorations in Civilization (1914)

• Naught to Thirty-Three (1944)