H=(96) I=(362) J=(359) K=(257+469) L=(7) M=(11+419) N=(410) O=(419+272)
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Robert Lewis was born 13 May 1816 at Llanilor in Cardiganshire, South Wales where his parents were farmers. His father, Lewis Lewis and mother Catherine Humphreys had a family of four children: John born about 1814, Robert born 1816, Mary born 1819, and Margaret born 1821. With his unmarried sister Margaret, Robert sailed from Dartmouth, Port of London on 1 Jun 1853 on the "Gibson Craig". He was then 37 years old and had been working as a draper. The thousand ton vessel arrived at Hobson’s Bay, Port Phillip on 23 August 1853. Upon arriving in Ballarat Robert Lewis went into partnership with another Welshman, Evan Rowlands. Together they founded an aerated water factory in a tent at the edge of Lake Wendouree in 1854. Before long they had moved to the north-east corner of the intersection of Sturt and Dawson Streets. They made lemonade, soda water and ginger beer, and in 1858 introduced steam power and began to use Warrenheip spring water. In 1870 Rowlands & Lewis built and opened a new factory in Dana Street, where they churned out 3,500 dozen bottles per day using three double action soda water machines. The factory site is now covered by the Central Square Shopping Centre multi-storey car park. Their factory venture was so successful that in July 1873 they opened works in Melbourne. Robert Lewis retired from the company in 1876, but by the time of his death in 1894 Evan Rowlands had factories in Ballarat, Melbourne, Sydney and Newcastle. The company was eventually sold to Schweppes after the Second World War. Robert Lewis became a Ballarat councilor in 1859, a position he held from then until his death, other than a short break of four years. Lewis was elected chairman in 1862, and when Ballarat West was proclaimed a borough in October 1863, as the last chairman of the municipality he was chosen first mayor of the borough. He was elected mayor again in 1871, by which time Ballarat West had become a City, and in 1881 he was elected to the mayoral position for the fifth time. Lewis, with a group of other men, started the movement towards the establishment of Ballarat Hospital, after the experience of not being able to provide hospital care for the wounded after Eureka at the end of 1854. He was a member of the first hospital committee, vice-president in 1859 and president 3 times, and apart from two years was a committee member until his death. On 24 May 1869, celebrated as the Queen's Birthday, Mayor Lewis laid the foundation stone of the tower and Alfred memorial wing which allowed a total of 185 bed patients on the site where the Ballarat Miners' Hospital had been established in 1856 and added to in 1860 when it became the Ballarat District Hospital. At 8.30am on Saturday 30 August 1884 a waiter at Lester's Hotel, 70 Sturt Street, where he had lived for some years, found Robert Lewis lying unconscious in his bedroom. Doctors were called but he died around noon, the cause of death being given as a stroke. He is buried at the Ballarat General Cemetery
