Faces in the Street
a novel by Pip Wilson
ISBN 978-0-9803487-0-5
Characters
Lawson
and Co.
People, things and events directly and indirectly associated with Louisa and Henry Lawson, and the radical, feminist, artistic and ratbag scene of Australia in their time. Many names were friends and colleagues of the Lawsons; others are associated by being contemporaries and in Australia, but didn't meet them. Some items contemporaneous and just out of interest. See also The Louisa Lawson and Henry Lawson Chronology (five big pages).
Active Service Brigade • Francis Adams • Frederick Matthias Alexander • Maybanke Anderson • JA Andrews • David Mackenzie Angus • SS Aramac bombing • JF Archibald • Julian Ashton • Australasian Secular Association • Australian Socialist League • Australian Workman • Edmund Barton • Daisy Bates • Barbara Baynton • Earl Beauchamp • Randolph Bedford • Bermagui Mystery • Annie Besant • George Black • Barcroft Boake • Rolf Boldrewood • William Booth • Edwin Brady • Christopher Brennan • Frederick Brentnall • John Le Gay Brereton • Fred Broomfield • The Bulletin • Ada Cambridge • Raffaello Carboni • Joseph Carruthers • HH Champion • William Chidley • Circular Quay bomb plot • Circular Quay riot, 1890, Sydney • Marcus Clarke • William Whitehouse Collins • Charles Conder • William Patrick Crick • Joseph Crouch ('Rev. Dr Oswald Keating') • Dagworth Station arson • Victor Daley • Eleanor Dark • The Dawn • Dawn Club • Dawn and Dusk Club • Anderson Dawson • Medway Day • Alfred Deakin • Dulcie Deamer • Frederick Deeming 'The Demon' • CJ Dennis • Arthur Desmond • George Dibbs • Ignatius Donnelly • John Dwyer • William Dymock • Edward Dyson • Will Dyson • Havelock Ellis • Eureka Stockade • John Farrell • Federation of Australia • Fight of the Century • Andrew Fisher • Chummy Fleming • Miles Franklin • Franz Ferdinand, Archduke • 'Freedom on the Wallaby' • Joseph Furphy/Tom Collins • Edward Garnett • Henry George • May Gibbs • Mary Gilmore • Vida Goldstein • Adam Lindsay Gordon • Jim Gordon/James Grahame • Percy Grainger • Great White Fleet • Young Griffo • Hal Gye • Lesbia Harford • Lawrence Hargrave • Charles Harpur • Haymarket bombing • Haymarket Martyrs • John Haynes • Walter Head • Harry Holland • William Holman • Bland Holt • Lord Hopetoun • Livingston Hopkins ('Hop') • Houdini flies in Australia • William Morris Hughes • Lizzie Humphrey • Nelson Illingworth • Jandamarra • Helen Jerome • Clara Jones • Duke Kahanamoku ('The Big Kahuna') • Annette Kellerman • Ned Kelly (Glenrowan siege) • Ned Kelly hanged • Henry Kendall • Georgina King • Rudyard Kipling • Knights of Labor • Labor gov't: first in world • Peter Lalor • Annie Lane • Ernest Lane • William Lane • Jack Lang • Bertha Lawson • Henry Lawson • Henry Lawson's funeral • Louisa Lawson • Will Lawson • Charles Webster Leadbeater • Leigh House • Limelight Department • Norman Lindsay • Ruby Lindsay • David Low • Gresley Lukin • Mungo MacCallum • Louise Mack • Dorothea Mackellar • Mary MacKillop • William Macleod • Frank P Mahony • Tom Mann • Daniel Mannix • Katherine Mansfield • Maritime Strike of 1890 • Phil May • Orpheus Myron McAdoo • George Gordon McCrae • Frederick McCubbin • Billy McLean shooting • William 'Machine Gun' McMillan • Bertha McNamara (née Bertha Bredt) • WHT McNamara • Richard Denis Meagher • Nellie Melba • Melbourne Anarchist Club • Emma Miller • David Scott Mitchell • Dora Montefiore • Captain Moonlite • Breaker Morant • Jack Moses/Dog on Tuckerbox • Tom Mutch • New Australia and Cosme • John Norton • Bernard O'Dowd • King O'Malley • Max O'Rell • Henry Steel Olcott • Vance & Nettie Palmer • Henry Parkes • AB 'Banjo' Paterson • Larry Petrie • Marie Pitt • Rosa Praed • Colonel Tom Price • Katharine Susannah Prichard • Roderic Quinn • QVB opened • Arthur Rae • Republican Riot, 1887, Sydney • Henry Handel Richardson • Alban Joseph Riley • Tom Roberts • George Robertson • John Robertson • Paddlesteamer Rodney burned • Sam Rosa • Steele Rudd • Rose Scott • Shearers' Strike of 1891 • Kate Sheppard • Granny Smith • Smith's Weekly • Soldiers of the Cross • Catherine Helen Spence • WG Spence • Captain Starlight • AG Stephens • Bertram Stevens • Dave Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson • Arthur Streeton • Rev. Charles Strong • Pat Sullivan/Felix the Cat • Rose Summerfield • Surfing origins/Isabel Letham • Sydney Anarchy Trial of February, 1894 • Sydney Anarchy Trial of June, 1894 • Sydney cricket riot of 1879 • Sydney Ducks in San Francisco • Sydney Twelve, The • Joseph Symes • Quong Tart • Tasma (Jessie Couvreur) • Adolphus George Taylor • Florence Taylor • George Augustine Taylor • The flying Taylors • Tenterfield Oration • Hannah Thornburn • Thunderbolt • Ben Tillett • WH Traill • PL Travers • Tree of Knowledge • Sydney Truth • Ethel Turner • Mark Twain in Australia • 'Up the Country' poetic contest • Thomas Walker • 'Waltzing Matilda' • Price Warung • Chris Watson • Beatrice Webb • Sidney Webb • Robert Bradford Williams • JC Williamson • William Nicholas Willis • Margaret Windeyer • William Windeyer • William Robert Winspear • Wobbly Tom Barker arrested • Wobblies outlawed • Womanhood Suffrage League • Women's suffrage, Australia • Women's suffrage New Zealand • Women's suffrage, South Australia • World chronology of women’s suffrage • David McKee Wright • WWI anti-conscription struggle • Alfred Yewen • Lamont Young •
More than 230 people who appear or are mentioned in the book
(Read at own risk as you might find plot spoilers)
Abbott, Sir Joseph Palmer (September 29, 1842 - September 15, 1901), NSW lawyer and politician, Speaker of the NSW Legislative Assembly (October 22, 1890 - June 12, 1900); NSW delegate to the Federal Conventions of 1891, 1897 and 1898 where he acted as Chairman of Committees.
Anderson, Maybanke (February 16, 1845 - April 15, 1927), women’s suffrage campaigner, amateur historian, educator, writer, co-founder, with Louisa Lawson, Rose Scott (qv), and Dora Montefiore (qv), of the WSL (qv) and president from 1893-96. Deserted by her unemployed timber-merchant husband Edmund Wolstenholme in December, 1884, she shortly thereafter founded the successful Maybanke College. Anderson published Women’s Voice magazine which, following in the footsteps of Louisa Lawson’s Dawn, was produced by female workers. She was foundation president of the Kindergarten Union of NSW which opened Australia’s first free kindergarten (possibly first in the British Empire) in the working-class suburb of Woolloomooloo in 1896. In 1899 she married (Sir) Francis Anderson, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. Anderson was secretary of the Playgrounds Association of New South Wales until the 1920s. Among much else, she wrote The Root of the Matter: Social and Economic Aspects of the Sex Problem, 1916.
Andrews, John Arthur (JA Andrews; October 27, 1865 - 1903), anarchist writer and pamphleteer, poet, inventor, philosopher, arguably the most remarkable of the group that came together in the Melbourne Anarchist Club. Henry Lawson met him (c. 1892) when Andrews was 27 and campaigning in Sydney (for which he ended up in Parramatta Gaol). Bertram Stevens (qv) wrote that Andrews “was as gentle as a grub and looked like Christ”. He was so poor that sometimes he “lived on opossums” in the bush and resided in a water tank. During 1889 much of his writing was published in Bob Winspear’s (qv) Radical. He couldn’t afford a lead-type printing press, but managed to produce Anarchist (1891) and various tracts on a home-made contraption using a wooden font carved for the purpose. He was associated with Joseph Schellenberg (qv) and the Smithfield communist-anarchists while in Sydney from late-1890, helping to establish the Communist-Anarchist Group of Central Cumberland operations centre there. His writings were highly philosophical but he was also a hard-working activist. He spent time in prison for his activities, for sedition and other crimes such as not having a publisher’s imprint on his A Handbook of Anarchy (1894) After his early death from tuberculosis he was compared to Tolstoy, Kropotkin (qv), Thoreau (qv) and Verlaine, among others. Influenced by mystic Madame Blavatsky (qv) and probably by the tour of Australia by Annie Besant (qv), in 1897 Andrews, Schellenberg and John Dwyer (qv) founded an Isis Lodge in Sydney and attempted its affiliation with the Theosophical Society in London.
Angus, David Mackenzie (July 12, 1855 - February 21, 1901), Scotish-born Australian bookseller, partner with George Robertson (qv) in the prominent book publisher and bookseller, Angus & Robertson.
Archibald, JF (Jules François Archibald; b. John Feltham Archibald; January 14, 1856 - September 10, 1919), Australian publisher who in 1880 co-founded (with John Haynes, qv) The Bulletin, which published a great many of Australia’s writers and artists. Like many Australians of his day, he was fascinated by all things French, changing his name from John Feltham to Jules François; he even wore a French goatee beard although they were not fashionable. Under Archibald’s sole control, and with AG Stephens (qv) as his literary editor, The Bulletin became Australia’s leading outlet for poets, cartoonists, short-story writers and comic writers. Henry Lawson was one who ‘Archy’ of the ‘Bully’ took under his wing as a young writer. In 1906 Archibald was admitted to Callan Park Hospital for the Insane, but after two years made a complete recovery. Says the Australian Dictionary of Biography: “In 1914, with some bitterness, he sold his interest in the Bulletin – now markedly more conservative. ‘The Bulletin is a clever youth’, he had said twenty years before. ‘It will become a dull old man’.” In his will, Archibald made the two bequests by which he is best remembered by Australians: funds for the Archibald Fountain in Sydney’s Hyde Park, which he specified must be designed by a French sculptor, and the Archibald Prize for portraiture, now Australia’s most prestigious art prize. Like Henry Lawson, he is buried in Waverley Cemetery (qv).
Arthur, Chester Alan (October 5, 1829 - November 18, 1886), 21st President of the United States. Arthur was a member of the Republican Party and worked as a lawyer before becoming the 20th Vice-President in the administration of James Garfield. Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker, on July 2, 1881 and died on September 19, with Arthur becoming President, serving until 1885.
Ashton, Julian (January 27, 1851 - April 27, 1942), Australian artist and teacher, known for his support of the Heidelberg School and for his influential art school in Sydney. As a Trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW he championed emerging Australian artists of the Australian Impressionist or Heidelberg School, and the Gallery's decision to collect these works owes much to his influence. He painted a portrait of Sir Henry Parkes (qv) in 1889.
Bakunin, Mikhail (May 30, 1814 - June 13, 1876), Russian anarchist. He was best known as one of the first generation of anarchist philosophers, and has been called one of the ‘fathers of anarchism’.
Barker, Bishop Frederic (March 17, 1808 - April 6, 1882), English-born Anglican Bishop of Sydney. About 195.5cm (6’ 5”) tall and a teetotaller, his name was jokingly given to the largest glass of beer sold in late-19th-Century Sydney. He was a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge, and British Archbishop John Bird Sumner recommended him for the Diocese of Sydney. Barker was of frail health and was persuaded that “the comparative leisure of a Bishop of Sydney should encourage him to accept”. He arrived in Sydney in 1855 and gave 27 years of service. His achievements include the foundation of Moore Theological College and of The Church Society (now the Home Mission Society) in 1856, and the completion of St Andrew’s Cathedral in 1868. Under his guidance The Clergy Widows and Orphans Fund was established in 1867 and the Clergy Superannuation Fund in 1876. He left Sydney in March, 1881 to visit England, but his health failed there and he never returned, dying soon after. Barker’s Evangelicalism has left a strong imprint on the Sydney Diocese. His wife’s father, John Harden, was a friend of Wordsworth and his circle.
Barker, Tom (1887 - 1970), activist, member of IWW (qv). Born in England in 1887, in New Zealand he became a leader of Auckland’s General Strike of 1913, and was imprisoned on three counts of sedition. On his release he emigrated to Sydney where in 1915 he opposed the AWU (qv) for its refusal to organise workers of colour. He was a strong opponent of the pro-conscription policy of William Morris Hughes (qv). On September 3, 1915 he was arrested for creating and distributing posters which read: “To Arms! Capitalists, Parsons, Politicians, Landlords, Newspaper Editors, and other Stay-at-home Patriots. Your Country needs YOU in the trenches! Workers, follow your masters!! Stay at home.” Convicted, he was released after only three months of a twelve-month sentence, following a series of fires in stores and factories, probably set by his supporters. In 1918 he was deported to Chile and then expelled to Argentina where he became active in the Marine Transport Workers Union. In the USA he worked with Big Bill Haywood. In London, Barker became a Labour member of the St Pancras Council from 1949 to 1959 while caring for his blind wife.
Bartholdi, Frédéric Auguste (August 2, 1834 - October 4, 1904), French sculptor. Born in Colmar, Alsace, France, he studied architecture in Colmar and then went to Paris to further his studies in architecture as well as painting. Bartholdi would go on to become one of the most celebrated of 19th-Century sculptors, famous both in Europe and in North America. The work for which he is most famous is the Statue of Liberty, donated by the government of France in 1886 to the United States. Liberty, or Libertas as she was originally in the Roman pantheon, was presented in 1884 as a gift from the French Grand Orient Temple Masons to the Masons of America in celebration of the centenary of the first Masonic Republic, as much as a gift from France to America.
Barton, Sir Edmund (January 18, 1849 - January 7, 1920), Australian politician and judge, the first Prime Minister of Australia (1901-03) and a founding Justice of the High Court of Australia. He was a member of the Athenaeum Club with such noteworthy Sydneysiders as JF Archibald (qv), Julian Ashton (qv), Sir James Fairfax (qv) and Sir Mungo MacCallum (qv). Barton was a strong advocate of the federation of the Australian colonies, and after the death of Sir Henry Parkes (qv) in 1896 he effectively led the federal movement. Giving up the chance of high office in NSW, he campaigned tirelessly for Federation and was eventually elected Prime Minister, at first keeping his private practice as a barrister until his roles conflicted when he accepted a case against the Crown. Barton, an epicurean and never a ‘cold water man’, was nicknamed ‘Toby Tosspot’. During his tome as prime minister were established the Australian Public Service, the White Australia Policy, women’s right to vote and the High Court (on which he sat, following political retirement, for 17 years interpreting the Constitution he had helped to create). Barton accepted a GCMG (Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George) in 1902 after twice having refused knighthoods before.
Bates, Dame Daisy (Daisy May O’Dwyer; Kabbarli; October 16, 1863 - April 18, 1951), Irish-born Australian journalist and academically untrained anthropologist who lived from 1919 to 1945 among desert Aboriginal people; author of The Passing of the Aborigines (1938). On March 13, 1884 she married legendary Australian horsebreaker and Bulletin poet, Breaker Morant (qv), but kicked him out after he was caught stealing pigs. Or, so it is said. Significantly, they were never divorced. She married again, this time to John Bates, a breaker of wild horses, a bushman and drover, on February 17, 1885 (the bigamous nature of their marriage naturally kept secret during Bates’s lifetime). In August 1933 the Commonwealth Government invited Bates to Canberra to advise on Aboriginal affairs. The next year she was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by King George V. Bates’s eccentricities extended beyond her extraordinary life in the desert and included some fascinating confabulations about her own early life. Bates died a national celebrity.
Batho, Tom (Tom ‘the Vag’), co-founder (with Harry Holland, qv), in October, 1893 of the Socialist newspaper.
Beauchamp, Earl (The Right Honourable William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp KG PC; February 20, 1872 - November 15, 1938), British politician who succeeded his father as Earl Beauchamp in 1891, and was mayor of Worcester, UK at age 23. A progressive in his ideas, he was surprised to be offered in May 1899 the post of Governor of NSW, where he became a patron of Henry Lawson and a friend of Victor Daley (qv). Though considered to have been competent at the job, he was unpopular in the colony, and returned to Britain in 1900, where he served in the Liberal Government. In 1931, for political gain, his Tory brother-in-law ‘outed’ him as a homosexual to King George V. Lord Beauchamp is generally thought to have been Evelyn Waugh’s model for Lord Marchmain in the novel Brideshead Revisited.
Bedford, Randolph (July 28, 1868 - July 7, 1941), Australian poet, novelist (True Eyes and the Whirlwind; Snare of Strength; Aladdin and the Boss Cockie), short story writer (‘Fourteen Fathoms by Quetta Rock’; ‘The Language of Animals’) and politician. With Henry Lawson and Victor Daley (qv) et al, he was a member of the elite Dawn and Dusk Club (qv). He worked for a time on Argus (Broken Hill, NSW), and The Age, Melbourne. Much of his poetry appeared in The Bulletin (qv). In 1917 he entered the Queensland Legislative Council, on a platform to secure its abolition (which occurred in 1922). He was later elected as Labor candidate to the Legislative Assembly for Warrego, a seat which he held until his resignation in 1937 to contest the Maranoa seat for the federal House of Representatives. He was defeated, but was again elected to his old seat in the Legislative Assembly.
Beecher, Henry Ward (June 24, 1813 - March 8, 1887), American minister of religion and abolitionist, advocate of women’s suffrage and temperance; younger brother of Uncle Tom’s Cabin novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe (qv).
Bellamy, Edward (March 26, 1850 - May 22, 1898), American author of the utopian novel set in the year 2000, Looking Backward: 2000 - 1887, published in 1888. The book was very influential worldwide, no more so than in Australia among working-class radicals during the 1890s. Australia’s blossoming radical movement at this time had many journals serialising such authors as Thomas Paine, Bellamy, Henry George (qv) and Peter Kropotkin (qv), and books such as Looking Backward, were popular at Australian radical bookshops and lending libraries such as those run in Sydney by WHT McNamara (qv).
Bernhardt, Sarah (October 22, 1844 - March 26, 1923), French stage actress, ‘The Divine Sarah’. She was the eldest surviving illegitimate daughter of Judith van Hard, a Dutch Jewish courtesan known as ‘Youle’. Born in Paris as Henriette Rosine Bernard, after a successful acting career in France she came to London in 1876 where she quickly established herself as the leading actress of the day. On July 28, 1891, she began her season at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Sydney, Australia. Seats sold for up to £2 each; she stayed on the second floor of the Australia Hotel with a menagerie. In 1892 she asked Oscar Wilde (qv) to write her a play, which resulted in Salomé. However, the Lord Chamberlain had the play banned. Bernhardt was also one of the pioneer silent movie actresses, debuting as Hamlet in Le Duel d’Hamlet in 1900. She went on to star in eight motion pictures and two biographical films.
Besant, Annie (October 1, 1847 - September 20, 1933), English social reformer, author (The Political Status of Women; Marriage, As It Was, As It Is, And As It Should Be: A Plea For Reform; The Law Of Population), freedom fighter and worldwide head of the Theosophy movement. She was a member of the National Secular Society, which preached ‘free thought’ and of the Fabian Society, the noted socialist organisation whose members included George Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb (qv) and Beatrice Webb (qv). In 1877 Besant was convicted of selling birth-control pamphlets in the slums of London. After joining the Social Democratic Federation, she started her own campaigning newspaper, The Link. Besant helped ignite a three-week strike among the exploited employees of the Bryant & May match company (the Matchgirls’ Strike, qv). In this she was aided by HH Champion (qv), Catherine Booth and William Booth (qv) of the Salvation Army; it was the first strike by unorganised workers to gain UK-wide publicity. She was converted to Theosophy after reviewing The Secret Doctrine by Madame Helene Blavatsky (qv) in 1889. In 1893, soon after becoming a member of the Theosophical Society, Besant went to India for the first time. Thereafter she devoted much of her energy not only to the Theosophical Society, but also to India’s freedom and progress, working with Mahatma Gandhi, but in later years the two had a falling out and she opposed him. She started the Home Rule League in India with the aim of obtaining the freedom of the country and reviving the country’s cultural heritage. Annie Besant was also largely responsible for the upbringing of the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, who visited Sydney in 1926. In September, 1894 Mrs Besant gave lectures in Sydney during her Australian tour.
Black, George (February 15, 1854 - July 18, 1936), Scottish-born Australian political activist and parliamentarian for 25 years, eight months; co-founder, with Thomas Walker (qv), WHT McNamara (qv) and others, of the Republican League (1888), member of the ASL (qv) from 1890 to 1894, foundation member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). In 1873, while frequently drunk on the ship from which he sailed from Scotland, he flirted with a Mrs Duggan. For the affray that followed with Mr Duggan and the ship’s mate whom he hit, Black was thrown in irons. In Sydney, Mrs Duggan left her dullish schoolteacher husband for Black, whom she bore 12 children in the next 18 years. Mrs Duggan (she did not remarry, and Black presented her as his sister-in-law) later complained that she had also miscarried four times when Black had hit her. In June, 1892, when a member of the NSW Legislative Assembly (Seat of West Sydney), Black sued John Norton (qv), editor of Truth (for which Black had himself occasionally written) for libel, arising from articles about the continuing ill-treatment of Mrs Duggan. Black was awarded one farthing in damages (as his reputation was not demed to be worth more), but remained in parliament for many years and is considered one of the founding fathers of the ALP.
Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna (Helena Petrovna Hahn, also Hélène; August 12, 1831 [New Style] - May 8, 1891), best known as Helena Blavatsky or Madame Blavatsky, Ukrainian mystic and the founder of Theosophy. In 1874, Helena met Henry Steel Olcott (qv), lawyer, agricultural expert, and journalist who covered the Spiritualist phenomena. Soon they were living together in the ‘Lamasery’ where her work Isis Unveiled was created.
Bly, Nellie (May 5, 1865 - January 27, 1922), pseudonym of Elizabeth Jane Cochran or Cochrane, a pioneering female investigative journalist. On January 25, 1890 Bly bettered Phileas Fogg’s (qv) fictional Around the World in Eighty Days feat by doing it in just 72 days, six hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds. Born to Judge Michael Cochran and Mary Jane Kennedy Cochran, part of the large Cochran family of Apollo, Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Cochrane revolutionised journalism for women. In September 1887, she talked her way into the office of John Cockerill, managing editor of Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Cockerill hired the unknown journalist and gave Bly her first assignment – to be committed to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. Presenting herself as an insane woman, Nellie Bly came back from the asylum ten days later with stories of cruel beatings, ice-cold baths and forced, rancid meals. This adventurous and daring stunt propelled Bly into the limelight of the New York newspaper world, and, at only 23, Nellie Bly had become a pioneer of investigative journalism. In 1895 Bly married a millionaire, Robert Seaman, 50 years older than herself, and retired. She lost most of his money after he died and in 1919 tried unsuccessfully to make a comeback.
Boake, Barcroft (March 26, 1866 - May 2, 1892), Australian surveyor, stockman, drover and poet greatly admired by Henry Lawson. All but a few of his poems were published in The Bulletin (qv). Depressive by nature, when he was jilted by a lover and beset by family and financial troubles, he hanged himself from a tree with his stockwhip at Long Bay, Middle Harbour, Sydney. Nearly all his published verse was collected and issued in 1897 by Alfred Stephens (qv).
Boheme, Rose de, see Rose-Soley, Agnes.
Boldrewood, Rolf (b. Thomas Alexander Browne; August 6, 1826 - March 11, 1915), Australian magistrate and author (The Squatter's Dream; Robbery Under Arms; The Miner's Right; Shearing in the Riverina, NSW). Robbery Under Arms (1888), his ‘ripping yarn’ which became a classic in the author’s lifetime, has remained popular and been filmed three times.
Booth, William (April 10, 1829 - August 20, 1912), founder and first general (1878 - 1912) of the Salvation Army. Booth, Annie Besant (qv), William Stead, Catherine Booth, and Henry Hyde Champion (qv) campaigned together in the Matchgirls’ Strike of 1888 (qv). Booth toured Australia in 1891, following which Joseph Perry of the Salvation Army in Australia began the Limelight Department in Melbourne, leading to the production of arguably the first documentary and feature-length films in the world (an example of the latter notably being Soldiers of the Cross). A film of the celebrations of the Federation of Australia in 1901 is held by some to be the world’s first documentary film.
Brady, Edwin (August 7, 1869 - August 22, 1952), author (The Ways of Many Waters; Australia Unlimited; River Rovers), journalist and editor; close friend of Henry Lawson. In 1892 he was editor of the Australian Workman, succeeded by George Black (qv) in 1892. He was also editor of The Dead Bird, later (when threatened by Government legal action) called Bird-o’-Freedom and then renamed The Arrow. He also edited The Grip; Worker; The Native Companion, et al. Brady was one of the founders of the Australian Labor Party. In the Australian Worker of March 26, 1892, either George Black or Sam Rosa (qv) called him “up-to-the-knees-in-blood, barricade fighter Brady”, and Brady was sometimes accused of being a radical bomber, and at other times a police pimp (qv) and agent provocateur. In 1892, while Secretary of the ASL (qv), he was editor of the Australian Workman. In 1895, the day after his divorce from his wife Marion Walsh (married October 30, 1890), he married labor activist Creo Stanley (qv), though this relationship did not last long either. In August, 1901, at Grafton, NSW, he became part-owner (with Miss Susan Penrose) and editor of The Grip (until July, 1903), clashing with the local council and losing advertisers. In Sydney in 1903 he set up the Commonwealth Press Agency. He succeeded George Black as editor of the Labor paper Worker, from August, 1904. Late in 1906 he departed Sydney for Melbourne where he became as involved with left-wing and artistic circles as he had been in his youth in Sydney. There he edited The Native Companion, ran his press agency and was an advertising representative for John Norton’s (qv) Truth. It has been said he ‘discovered’ the writers Katherine Mansfield (qv) and Katharine Susannah Prichard.
Bredt, Bertha, Senior (mother-in-law of Henry Lawson), see McNamara, Bertha.
Brennan, Christopher (November 1, 1870 - October 7, 1932), Australian poet and scholar; lecturer in modern literature at the University of Sydney, later associate professor in German and comparative literature until forced to resign because of his drinking and a marital ‘scandal’. Brennan sometimes collaborated with John Le Gay Brereton (qv). Brennan’s work was and still is highly regarded by the critics (some have argued that he is Australia’s greatest poet), but he failed to find a popular audience. Among others, he was influenced by French poet Stéphane Mallarmé. Bulletin (qv) critic AG Stephens (qv) wrote a biography of him. In his later years he obtained a small Commonwealth literary pension and some teaching at schools. Two daughters predeceased him.
Brentnall, Frederick (June 17,1834 - January 11, 1925), conservative Member of the Queensland Legislative Council; chairman of the board of directors of the Brisbane Telegraph. He opposed the unions and women’s suffrage. However, his wife Elizabeth was Colonial President of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union which, from 1891, lobbied for women’s suffrage. In 1915 Frederick Brentnall referred to the fact that although women could stand for election to Federal Parliament none had been elected: “Does not the fact that the electors have not yet elected one show that they are wiser than the men who passed the Act?”
Brereton, John Le Gay (September 2, 1871 - February 2, 1933), Australian academic and writer, close but sometimes battling friend of Henry Lawson. His prominent physician father (of the same name), although a Quaker in early life, was converted to the doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg and in Sydney became a leader of the New Jerusalem Church. From 1891 until 1894 the younger JLG Brereton was one of the editors of the Sydney University Arts journal Hermes, in which he wrote an early glowing review of Lawson’s work. Brereton apparently shocked his former mentor, Mungo MacCallum (qv), when he devoted a lecture to a frank discussion of the homosexual themes apparent in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. In 1921 he was appointed Professor of English Literature at the Sydney University, after having been that institution's chief librarian. Mary Cameron, later Gilmore (qv), introduced Henry Lawson to him at her place at Enmore some time after September in 1894, the year Brereton finished studies at Sydney University. At the time that Lawson befriended him, ‘Jack’ Brereton was a disciple of Annie Besant (qv). Brereton was a Nature lover and vegetarian, the first president of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (1929) and, with Bertha Lawson (qv), editor of Henry Lawson, By His Mates (1931).
Brooks, Emma, Henry Lawson’s Aunt Emma; sister of Louisa Lawson. Henry Lawson lived with her at different times, mostly in and around Millers Point, Dawes Point and North Sydney, and she was the recipient of some of his extant letters. However, there seems to be little or no record of association between Lawson and Aunt Emma from the time that she hurriedly left the Henry and Bertha Lawson home in 14 College St, Wellington, New Zealand on December 9, 1897.
Broomfield, Fred (April 2, 1860 - May 22, 1941), English-born Australian writer, friend of Henry Lawson and prominent co-member with him of the Dawn and Dusk Club (qv) which formed around Victor Daley (qv); some meetings were held in his Darlinghurst home. Before coming to Sydney in the 1880s, where he gained employment as an accountant, Broomfield worked for the Kyneton (Victoria) Guardian and as a correspondent for the Melbourne Age. Flamboyant, bohemian Broomfield was a contributor to The Bulletin (qv) and at one time worked there as a sub-editor. Tradition has it that it was Broomfield who accepted Henry Lawson’s first Bulletin contribution. He defended Lawson in Henry Lawson and his Critics (1930).
Browning, Robert (May 7, 1812 - December 12, 1889), English poet and playwright.
Buckley, William (1780 - January 1, 1856), more commonly just ‘Buckley’, an Australian convict who escaped and became famous for living in an Aboriginal tribal community for 32 years. On December 27, 1803, Buckley and two other convicts cut loose a boat and escaped from custody. For the next 32 years he continued to live among the Watourong tribe on the Bellarine Peninsula, Victoria. On July 6, 1835 he decided to return to European society; wearing kangaroo skins and carrying Aboriginal weapons, he walked into John Batman’s camp at Indented Head. In September of the same year, he was granted a pardon by Lieutenant-Governor Arthur. In 1836, Buckley was given the position of interpreter to the natives, and as a guide for Captain Foster Fyans, among others, his knowledge of Aboriginal language was put to good use. However, by late 1837, he had become disenchanted with his new way of life – and the people around him – and left for Van Diemen’s Land where he remained for the next 19 years. He died in 1856 at the age of 75, following a cart accident near Hobart. According to reports, Buckley was somewhere between 193cm (6’ 4”) and 200cm (6’7”) in height.
Burns, Rabbie (Robert Burns; January 25, 1759 - July 21, 1796), the best known of the poets who have written in Scots. Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) ‘Auld Lang Syne’ is often sung at Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve), and ‘Scots Wha Hae’ served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Other poems and songs of Burns that remain well known today across the world include ‘A Red, Red Rose’, ‘An’ For A’ That’ (‘A Man’s a Man for All That’), ‘To a Louse’, and ‘To a Mouse’. He alienated many of his best friends by expressing too freely his sympathy with the French Revolution, and the then unpopular advocates of reform at home. His health began to give way; he became prematurely aged, and fell into fits of despondency; the habits of intemperance, to which he had always been more or less addicted, increased Within a short time of his death, money started pouring in from all over Scotland to support his widow and children.
Byers, Isabel, Henry Lawson’s household companion, or landlady, from 1903 to 1921. They met each other in a Darlinghurst boarding-house owned by a Mrs Colman.
Cadogan, Rose, see Summerfield, Rose.
Cambridge, Ada (November 21, 1844 - July 19, 1926), Anglo-Australian hymnist, poet and author of 25 novels (A Marked Man; The Three Miss Kings; Not All in Vain).
Cameron, Mary, see Gilmore, Dame Mary.
Carboni, Raffaello (December 15, 1817 - October 24, 1875), Italian linguist, writer, traveller, composer and gold-digger, trusted lieutenant at the Eureka Stockade (qv) in charge of the diggers who spoke European languages. In Italy he was imprisoned five times for his patriotic and radical activities.
Carrington, Lord (Charles Robert Wynn-Carrington, 1st Marquess of Lincolnshire; May 16, 1843 - June 13, 1928), British Liberal politician and aristocrat, Governor of NSW, 1885-90. Following this he was Lord Chamberlain (UK) 1892-1895, and President of the Board of Agriculture (1905-1911). He was created Earl Carrington and Viscount Wendover in 1895 and Marquess of Lincolnshire in 1912. He was, according to his obituary in The Times, “all his life an advanced Liberal, even a Radical, in spite of old-fashioned prejudices”.
Carruthers, Sir Joseph (December 21, 1857 - September 15, 1932), lawyer, investor, Premier of NSW 1904-07. Before Federation Carruthers had been a member of George Reid’s (qv) Free Trade ministry. He was a strong opponent of federal Protectionist policies and clashed with Alfred Deakin (qv) on this issue and on the transfer of land for the Federal Capital Territory. Carruthers was also aligned with Reid in introducing Empire Day in 1905. In 1898, when he was Secretary for Lands, John Norton (qv) won a libel action brought by Carruthers. He was one of ten NSW delegates to the pre-Federation second National Australasian Convention. While Premier, his loose associations with William Willis (qv) and Paddy Crick (qv) led to strong allegations (largely by Norton) that Carruthers was involved in bribery. The Royal Commission into the Department of Lands scandal reported that “nothing in the evidence … implicated Mr Carruthers”. While Leader of the Government in the NSW Upper House in 1922-25, Carruthers was a fierce opponent of Jack Lang (qv) who proposed to abolish that chamber.
Chamberlain, Joseph (July 8, 1836 - July 2, 1914), British statesman, Colonial Secretary, regarded as one of the most important British politicians of the late-19th Century and early-20th Century; father of Neville Chamberlain (1869 - 1940). In 1900 Alfred Deakin (qv) travelled to London to oversee the passage of the Australian Federation bill through the Imperial Parliament, and took part in the negotiations with Joseph Chamberlain.
Champion, HH (Henry Hyde Champion; January 22, 1859 - April 30, 1928), British Christian Socialist social reformer. He was the first to publish a book by George Bernard Shaw (Cashel Byron’s Profession, 1886). In the same year he was indicted for sedition in connection with the Trafalgar Square riots, but gained acquittal. In 1888, Champion joined with Annie Besant (qv), Catherine Booth and William Booth (qv) in the Matchgirls’ Strike (qv) against the Bryant & May Company. In 1889 Champion emerged with Ben Tillett (qv), Tom Mann (qv) and John Burns as one of the leaders of the London Dock Strike, which was supported by Australian unionists with donations of about £30,000. Disillusioned with his colleagues by 1894, he left the Independent Labour Party and emigrated to Australia where he stayed until his death. Like The Bulletin of Sydney, his journal, Champion, published from Melbourne from June 22, 1895, was a significant influence on culture and radical politics of the time. He was supportive of Henry Lawson, but even-handed, and wrote in a review of In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses (1896): “The proletarian predominates over the poet, and there is much froth yet to be blown off the top of this new-drawn pewter pot of Parnassus brew”. He unsuccessfully stood for the seat of South Melbourne for the Victorian Legislative Assembly, following which he became a leader writer for The Age. He also published (1899 - 1921) a literary journal, Book Lover and founded a literary agency. His obituary in The Times of May 2, 1928, said: “Champion was an exceedingly able writer and the wielder of a caustic pen. He had, however, the temperament of an aristocrat and an inborn sympathy with Conservative traditions, both of which prevented him from really understanding and sympathizing with the minds of the masses whom he endeavoured to lead.”
Clarke Brothers, The, Thomas, James and John Clarke of Monaro, NSW, bushrangers (qv), or more accurately, cattle duffers and horse thieves. They killed four men at Jinden Station and were also involved in the murder of a policeman. Ambushed by police in a hut on April 26, 1867, they were tried, found guilty and hanged on June 25.
Cleveland, (Stephen) Grover (March 18, 1837 - June 24, 1908), 22nd (1885-1889) and 24th (1893-1897) President of the USA, and the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms. He was the only Democrat elected to the presidency in the era of Republican political domination between the American Civil War and the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1912.
Coghlan, Dr Iza, one of the first two women to graduate in medicine from Sydney University (1893), the other being Dr Grace Robinson. Coghlan was a graduate of Sydney High School.
Coghlan, Sir Timothy (June 9, 1856 - April 30, 1926), statistician and public servant. Government Statistician in NSW (1886-1905) and NSW Agent-General in London (1905-26). He initiated the New South Wales Year-Books and in 1918 published his major work Labour and Industry in Australia from the first Settlement in 1788 to the Establishment of the Commonwealth in 1901. He was knighted in 1914 and created KCMG in 1918.
Collins, Wilkie (January 8, 1824 - September 23, 1889), English novelist (The Moonstone), playwright, and writer of short stories.
Collins, William Whitehouse (September 4, 1853 - April 12, 1923), English-born rationalist and freethought lecturer, activist and parliamentarian, active in Australia and New Zealand in the late-19th and early-20th Centuries, who worked with Annie Besant (qv) in London before becoming a leading light of progressive activism in Sydney. Collins campaigned for social reforms in the prisons and worked for the abolition of capital punishment. He was vigorously active in the movements for the eight-hour working day, veterans’ pensions, education, tenants’ rights, deaf and mute children, and women’s rights, especially in cases of divorce. Before arriving in Sydney in 1890, he was Vice-President of the New Zealand Freethought Association.
Conrad, Joseph (December 3, 1857 - August 3, 1924) Polish author born Józef Teodor Nalecz Konrad Korzeniowski in Berdyczów (Berdychiv), then Poland under Russian rule, now Ukraine. He lived an adventurous life, becoming involved in gunrunning and political conspiracy, which he later fictionalised in his novel The Arrow of Gold. In 1878, after a failed suicide attempt, Conrad took service on his first British ship. He learned English before the age of 21, and in 1886 gained both his Master Mariner’s certificate and British citizenship. He first arrived in England at the port of Lowestoft, Suffolk, and lived later in London and near Canterbury, Kent. In 1894 he left the sea to become an English-language author. His first novel, Almayer’s Folly, set on the east coast of Borneo, was published in 1895. Many of his early novels are set on board ships. His novel Nostromo is a study of revolution in South America, while The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes are among the first modern novels to treat the subjects of terrorism and espionage. He also wrote Heart of Darkness (1899) and Lord Jim (1900). He was in Sydney as skipper of the Otago in 1888 and sailed out of Sydney Heads on the same day in May as the controversial Afghan also left.
Cowper, The Very Reverend William Macquarie, MA (July 3, 1810 - June 14, 1902), the first Australian-born Anglican clergyman, Dean of St Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney, 1858 - 1902. Archdeacon of Sydney from 1858. Minister of the Ecclesiastical District of St Andrew, from 1869. In March, 1856, Bishop F Barker (qv) appointed him acting principal of the new Moore Theological College at Liverpool. Cowper had Governor Lachlan Macquarie (qv) among his godparents.
Coxey, Jacob (sometimes known as General Coxey; April 16, 1854 - May 18, 1951), socialist American politician and activist, who twice led ‘Coxey’s Army’ (officially named ‘the Commonwealth of Christ’), bands of unemployed men who marched on Washington, DC in 1894 and 1914 to demand that Congress appropriate money to create jobs for the unemployed.
Crane, Stephen (November 1, 1871 - June 5, 1900), American writer (The Red Badge of Courage, 1895). In 1897, Crane settled in England, where he was friendly with writers Joseph Conrad (qv) and Henry James, and had his career promoted by Edward Garnett (qv). Crane died of tuberculosis aged 28, in Badenweiler, Germany.
Crick, William Patrick (Paddy Crick; February 10, 1862 - August 28, 1908), colourful, hard-drinking solicitor, politician and newspaperman of Sydney. Crick was a founder (with William Nicholas Willis, qv, and Adolphus George Taylor, qv) of Truth, a scurrilous but popular journal (first issue, mid-August, 1890). A Member of the NSW Legislative Assembly from 1889 and Cabinet Minister from 1899 - 1904, Crick was expelled and found guilty of corruption while Minister for Lands. He resigned to avoid expulsion from Parliament in 1906 (there had been an earlier expulsion, on November 13, 1890; re-elected December 6, 1890). Crick was a past master of what might be called ‘larrikin politics’ at a time when NSW politicians were not known for mincing words. Norton v Crick (1894) 15 LR (NSW) 172 remains one of the most interesting court cases of 19th-Century Sydney. Crick was NSW Postmaster-General from September 14, 1899 to February 28,1901 and Secretary for Lands from April 11, 1901 to June 14, 1904.
Crouch, Joseph James, British conman. On September 22, 1890 was published the first edition of the Australian Workman, official organ of the TLC (qv) in Sydney (a founding organisation of the Australian Labor Party), following the demise of the Australian Radical almost exactly a year earlier. The first editor was Rev. Dr (Theodore) Oswald Keating, MA, DD, LLD, who had just stepped off a clipper ship from Britain in July and had some writings published in Truth’s earliest numbers. The proprietors of Australian Workman were impressed with him and under the circumstances of the Maritime Strike of 1890, pleased to have a clergyman’s name on the masthead. By the end of October, the ‘clergyman’ was suing the newspaper for £5 for wrongful dismissal. Dr Keating was in fact Joseph James Crouch, a forger and conman who had impersonated clergy of various denominations for thirty years, been imprisoned a number of times, and robbed and abandoned a widow he had married for money in England. In the USA in 1881 he had conned many, including the prominent American clergyman Rev. Henry Ward Beecher (qv), who lent him money as well as his pulpit. He could speak fluently in several languages, including Hebrew. He also plied his craft in Canada, and in Dublin, Ireland he enjoyed a reputation as a brilliant Protestant preacher. In Kilmainham Gaol, he was the ‘guest’ of the Governor, who had had him for dinner as a guest of honour just a fortnight before. Australian Workman was first published from strike headquarters at the Australian Coffee Palace, Castlereagh St; it was pretty much controlled by the ASL (qv) until 1894. It ended in 1897.
Cullen, Sir William (The Honourable Sir William Portus Cullen, KCMG, LLD; May 28, 1855 - April 6, 1935), lawyer, Lieutenant-Governor of NSW from 1911 to 1930; Chief Justice of NSW from 1910 to 1925. He entered politics in 1891 when he was elected a Member of the Legislative Assembly for Camden. He was knighted in 1911 and appointed KCMG in the following year. From 1914 he was Chancellor of Sydney University for the then record term of twenty years. Several times he acted as governor during the absence of governors from the State or between appointments.
Daley, Victor (c. September 5, 1858 - December 29, 1905), Irish-born Australian journalist and poet, best known for the poem ‘Eureka’, about the Eureka Stockade (qv). In 1900 he was probably Australia’s best-selling poet. He was published (sometimes under the signature of ‘Creeve Roe’, a name adapted from the Gaelic meaning ‘Red Branch’) in such magazines as Punch and The Bulletin (qv). He said that as a child in Ireland he made bullets for his Fenian relatives. For a time, like Harry Holland, he worked on Queanbeyan Times. By nature puritanical, he shrank from ‘evil language, gross stories and violence of any kind’, but the other side of his character was rather wild – he was also a hard-drinking bohemian, and the circle of heavily imbibing artists and writers (including Henry Lawson) who formed around him from September, 1898 were known as the Dawn and Dusk Club (qv), deriving its name from At Dawn and Dusk, the first of Daley’s many books, produced under the guidance of AG Stephens (qv). Suffering from tuberculosis, Daley stayed with Edwin Brady (qv) at Grafton in 1902. Late in 1905, Daley died of that disease at Waitara, Sydney. He had earlier told Albert Dorrington that “he was getting into training for a big fight about Christmas time”. Daley was buried at Waverley Cemetery (qv), Sydney.
Dawson, Anderson (July 16, 1863 - July 20, 1910), Australian politician. His was the first elected labor party or parliamentary socialist government in the world and he was the Premier of Queensland, Australia for just one week in 1899. In April, 1904 Dawson was given the portfolio of Minister for Defence in the world’s first national Labor government under Prime Minister Chris Watson (qv). The Federal electoral division of Dawson is named after him.
Day, Medway (February 24, 1838 - July 8, 1905), English-born Australian labor journalist and Baptist minister; chairman of the South Australian Baptist Association, 1870-71; nicknamed ‘Judgement Day’ by fellow journalists. Day had been leader writer for Register in Adelaide, editor of Voice and became editor of Australian Worker in 1894. Although strongly influenced by the writings of Henry George (qv), he eschewed the epithet ‘Single Taxer’, although in 1892 he was editor of the Single Tax League’s paper, Pioneer. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says that “He so strongly championed the co-operative village settlements on the Murray that the Bulletin could say they were ‘largely of his making’.” A strong proponent of the co-operative movement, in the late-1890s he was manager of the Trades’ Council Co-operative Store in Sydney.
De Guinney, Ernest, self-styled Russian aristocrat-turned-nihilist who tramped with Henry Lawson and Jim Gordon (qv) in north-western NSW during the Summer of 1892-3; Lawson thought he was “a griper” and the mateship was short lived. When he tricked Henry into drinking water from a tank, one that had a dead carpet snake in it, at Kelly’s Camp Bore, that was the last straw for Lawson. In 1892 De Guinney had written in New Australia, “If we succeed – we’ll achieve a glorious reformation. If we fail – but there, we’re not going to fail …” but it was another eleven years before he himself went to New Australia (qv). During the 1890s he worked as a seaman and in 1896 shot dead an officer on his ship, but a New York Grand Jury decided it had been self defence and refused to file a bill. He spent just three months in 1903 at Cosme (qv), when the colony was already on its last legs, and later wrote bitterly about his experience, saying the commune was run by a selfish clique and full of sexual immorality. Interestingly, Gavin Souter (1968) gives evidence that De Guinney himself was not above sexual escapades at Cosme, and might have been a thief.
Deakin, Alfred (August 3, 1856 - October 7, 1919), Australian lawyer, journalist and politician, a leader of the movement for Australian Federation and later second Prime Minister of Australia; he held that post three times between 1903 and 1910. He was active in the Australian Natives Association and was also a lifelong Spiritualist, with associations with the Theosophical Society and the Australian Church of Rev. Charles Strong (qv). In 1900 Deakin travelled to London to oversee the passage of the federation bill through the Imperial Parliament, and took part in the negotiations with Joseph Chamberlain (qv), the Colonial Secretary, nearly derailing the process. In 1901 he was elected to the first Federal Parliament as MP for Ballarat (Victoria), and became Attorney-General in the ministry headed by Edmund Barton (qv). Nicknamed ‘Affable Alfred’ by those of his contemporaries who liked him, he is regarded as a founding father by the modern Liberal Party. In 1906, Deakin, a keen cyclist, became the first and probably only Prime Minister to get a summons for riding on the footpath. Deakin was interested in the occult and Spiritualism, believing that he channelled John Bunyan, and writing A New Pilgrim's Progress.
Deeming, Frederick (Deeming the Demon Murderer; July 30?, 1842 - May 23, 1892), sailor, hanged in Melbourne for the murders of several women and his own children. Much of the public of Australia was convinced he was Jack the Ripper. He was arrested in the small Western Australian town of Southern Cross on March 11, 1892. Deeming then became a suspect in London’s Ripper case; there were unsubstantiated reports that samples of handwriting from ‘Jack’ and from Deeming were written by the same person. The trial began as scheduled on April 28, 1892. Deeming’s lawyers were Alfred Deakin (qv), later Prime Minister of Australia, and William Forlonge. Although Deeming claimed that his dead mother had ordered him to commit the murders, and despite the fact that he was probably mentally ill, (as Deakin believed), the jury needed very little time to reject Deeming’s plea of insanity and declare him guilty. Twelve thousand people cheered outside Melbourne Gaol when they heard that his execution was done.Dennis, CJ (‘Den’; Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis; September 7, 1876 - June 22, 1938), Australian writer and poet (Songs of a Sentimental Bloke). CJ Dennis was born in Auburn, South Australia where his father was a publican, and his poetry was probably a rebellion against his upbringing by maiden aunts, who dressed him (according to biographer Alec Chisholm) in a starchy suit, Eton collar, patent leather shoes, and so on. He was even obliged to carry a cane. The local boys considered ‘Clarence’ quite a ‘sissy’. Dennis never called himself ‘Clarence’, preferring ‘CJ’ or ‘Den’. His father gave him a job but he ‘shot through’ to Broken Hill, where there was no work for a lad with a weak physique. The legend goes he sent a telegram to his father “Send five pounds. Gone to Broken Hill”, whereupon his father returned a telegram: “Sending nothing. Go to Hell.” He went to Adelaide, where he helped launch the satirical weekly The Gadfly. 1908 he went to Melbourne, lived in a tent in the Dandenong hills outside the city. In 1914 Dennis wrote his humorous masterpiece, The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, a long narrative poem, or ‘verse novel’ that has become an Australian classic. Rejected by a Melbourne publisher, in the next year it was published by Angus and Robertson; it was a roaring success (selling 66,000 copies in its first 18 months), revealing as it did to Australians their own slang and culture of the common people. The book was hugely popular with homesick Aussie troops fighting in the French trenches of World War I. His next book, The Glugs of Gosh, was a popular mixture of satire and fantasy masquerading as a book for children. Prime Minister Joseph Lyons called Dennis “the Robert Burns of Australia”, a term that has often also been applied to Henry Lawson.
Desmond, Arthur (c. 1859? - 1926?), a leader of the ASB (qv). Possibly born in New Zealand, he stood in 1884 for Parliament in the seat of Hawke’s Bay, NZ, where he was a Maori rights campaigner and follower of Henry George (qv). By October 1892 he was in Sydney as a political activist, newspaper editor and writer, occasionally published in The Bulletin (qv). He edited and published the journal Justice for the ASB, as well as a newsletter on the banking collapse of 1893, Hard Cash, printed at a secret press located in a cave near West’s Bush at Paddington. He was a leading figure in radical political circles in Sydney for two or three years, associated with William Morris Hughes (qv) and Jack Lang (qv) who helped him “turn the mangle” to print Hard Cash “in the front room of a cottage in Rose Street, Darlington” (Lang). For a brief time Desmond was an influence on Henry Lawson’s poetry, eg, ‘A Leader of the Future’ (Worker, 1893). In December, 1893, an editorial in The Times (Wellington, New Zealand, where Henry Lawson was living at the time) surveyed the career of Arthur Desmond in Sydney, condemning him. Lawson came to his defence (in Fair Play, under the pen-name ‘Australian Exile’), more for Desmond’s courage in stating unpopular views than for the views themselves. In June, 1894 he was proposed as a Labor candidate but declined to stand, preferring to campaign for JC Watson (qv), who was elected. In 1896 Desmond published (in Chicago, USA) a Nietzschean, racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic book he had apparently written in Sydney, The survival of the fittest, or, The philosophy of power (reprinted in London and Melbourne as Might is Right). It was a fierce polemic which, it is said, went to numerous editions internationally; Leo Tolstoy argued against it in What is Art? (1898), and it influenced some of the early Wobblies (qv) and, a century later, some Satanist and right-wing libertarians. Claims have been made that its philosophy of ruthlessness influenced Kaiser Wilhelm, Theodore Roosevelt, Gabriele D’Annunzio and WM Hughes (qv), all of whom were supposed to have read it. Desmond, who once served two months hard labor for chalking on a bank “Going Bung”, left the ASB and involved himself in the establishment of a paper called The New Order, with which Billy Hughes and William Holman (qv) were also associated. He later joined the Labor Party. After a brief, mysterious and peripatetic career in Australia, Desmond is believed to have spent time in America and Britain, and is also reported to have travelled to Manchuria and South Africa, dying in Mexico in 1914, or perhaps in Palestine in 1918 (serving with that great imperialist, Viscount General Edmund Allenby). Desmond, or ‘Ragnar Redbeard’ as he commonly called himself in print (in London he ran a periodical called Redbeard’s Review which ran for about four years), was also said to be alive and running a bookshop in Chicago in the 1920s and some believe he died in 1926. His end is as mysterious as his beginning.
Dibbs, George (October 12, 1834 - August 5, 1904; Sir George from July, 1892), three times Protectionist Premier of NSW, strong opponent of women’s suffrage. In opposing Sir Henry Parkes’s (qv) Bill in 1891, Dibbs said “the bulk of women ... are utterly incapable of performing the duties of men”. He opposed Federation as not being in the financial interests of NSW, and because Sydney would not be the national capital.
Disraeli, Benjamin (December 21, 1804 - April 19, 1881), British statesman and literary figure. He served in government for three decades, twice as prime minister (February - December 1868; February 1874 - April 1880). When his maiden parliamentary speech was heckled he ended with the words, “though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear me.” He was elevated to the House of Lords in 1876 when Queen Victoria made him Earl of Beaconsfield. His popular nickname was ‘Dizzy’.
Dole, Sanford (April 23, 1844 - June 9, 1926), politician and jurist of Hawaii. He served as the first and only president from 1894 to 1900. During Dole’s period of authority, every nation that recognised the Kingdom of Hawaii also recognised the Republic of Hawaii.
Donnelly, Ignatius (November 3, 1831 - January 1, 1901), American congressman and author of utopian and fortean literature, especially on Atlantis. One of the most prominent 19th-Century Atlantist authors (he made his fortune with Atlantis: the Antediluvian World) Donnelly was an idiosyncratic and somewhat quixotic member of the USA Congress whose writings, particularly the utopian sci-fi novel, Cæsar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century, profoundly influenced the working class in pre-Federation Australia, with William Lane (qv) a particular enthusiast. On November 18, 1893, in Worker, a journalist calling himself ‘Murphy’ pilloried and compared Henry Lawson to Donnelly for his blood-and-thunder political article, ‘A Leader of the Future’. Perhaps ironically, Donnelly died in Minneapolis on the first day of the century, January 1, 1901, the very day that Australia’s Federation took effect. Donnelly is perhaps better known for his The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon’s Cipher in Shakespeare’s Plays about an alleged code in Shakespeare’s work that ‘reveals’ that Francis Bacon wrote much of The Bard’s work.
Donovan, James, a co-founder with Thomas Walker (qv) et al of the ASA (qv).
D’Oyly Carte, Richard (May 3, 1844 - April 3, 1901), British theatrical impresario remembered largely for operatic and Gilbert and Sullivan productions in London.
Dwyer, John (March 4, 1856 - February 1, 1934), English-born Australian anarchist labor activist, who immigrated to Australia in 1888. From the early 1890s he was a leader of Sydney’s ASB (qv) (with JA Andrews, qv, Arthur Desmond, qv, et al). Originally a London docks foreman, he emigrated to Australia in 1888 and became a boarding-house manager, a skill that was useful in the establishment of the ASB ‘barracks’ (doss houses or dormitories) for the unemployed. He was imprisoned after the Sydney Anarchy Trial of June, 1894. Judge Innes, who had seen the five defendants back-tracking, blaming each other and sometimes disavowing their radical principles, commented that the libel in question was not the only one he had seen in the journal Justice, of which he had read several copies. He then said it was “not desirable to stir up class hatreds in the community” and sentenced them all to terms of hard labour. An autodidact, Dwyer was interested in temperance, Darwinism and occult Spiritualism, and he became a member of the Independent Order of Good Templars, and the Theosophical Society. In 1897 anarchists JA Andrews (qv), Joseph Schellenberg (qv) and John Dwyer founded on their own initiative an Isis Lodge in Sydney and attempted its affiliation with the Theosophical Society in London. By 1900 the ASB had mostly abandoned its street-theatre radicalism, an early example of Situationism, and was mainly running boarding-houses, from which Dwyer derived a meagre income. He also tried to organise co-operative ventures for the unemployed, schemes which all failed. In his last 13 years he lived in obscurity in Sydney’s western suburbs, in the home of one of his children.
Dymock, William (May 11, 1861 - October 5, 1900), prominent Australian bookseller, of Sydney. Dymock was buried at Waverley Cemetery (qv), Sydney.
Dyson, Edward (March, 1865 - August 22, 1931), Australian author (Below and On Top) and poet (Men of Australia; Of the True Endeavour; The Old Whim Horse), closely associated with The Bulletin (qv). He figured to a minor degree in the ‘Up the Country’ poetic contest of Paterson (qv) and Lawson. Edward Dyson was an older brother of fellow Bulletin regular, the artist and cartoonist Will Dyson (September, 1880 - January 21, 1938), radical Australian artist and cartoonist associated with The Bulletin (qv) in its heyday.
Edmond, James, (April 21, 1859 - March 21, 1933) Scottish-born Australian journalist who took over editorship of The Bulletin from JF Archibald (qv) in 1903. Edmond opposed Archibald’s anti-feminism. ‘Archy’ said of him, “Jimmy's the only man I know who can get fun out of a balance-sheet”.
Edward I of England (June 17, 1239 - July 7, 1307), king popularly known as ‘Longshanks’ because of his 6’ 2” frame, and the ‘Hammer of the Scots’ (his tombstone, in Latin, read, Hic est Edwardvs Primus Scottorum Malleus, ‘Here lies Edward I, Hammer of the Scots’); achieved fame as the monarch who conquered Wales and who kept Scotland under English domination.
Engels, Friedrich (November 28, 1820 - August 5, 1895), German political philosopher. With Karl Marx (qv) he developed communist theory, co-authoring The Communist Manifesto (1848) and also edited several volumes of Das Kapital after Marx’s death.
Fairfax, Sir James Reading (October 17, 1834 - March 28, 1919), newspaper magnate, proprietor of the John Fairfax company, publishers of the Sydney Morning Herald (the oldest Australian newspaper, having been continuously published since 1831). His father, John Fairfax (b. October 25, 1804) was proprietor of the Herald from February 8, 1841 until his death on June 16, 1877. Sir James Fairfax was a religious man and President of the YMCA; he controlled the company from the death of his father until his own, 42 years later.
Fleming, Chummy (John Fleming; April 3, 1863 - January 25, 1950), English-born Australian unionist, agitator for the unemployed, and prominent anarchist in Melbourne. He enjoyed a good relationship with the Governor-General, John Adrian Louis Hope, 7th Earl of Hopetoun (qv), who lent him money to build a house, which Chummy duly called ‘Hopetoun’. A bootmaker by trade, ‘Chummy’ (the nickname at the time meant simply ‘Englishman’) was instrumental in starting May Day celebrations and marches in Melbourne, some of the earliest in the world. He was a member of the Melbourne Anarchist Club which formed on May 1, 1886, the first formal anarchist organisation in Australia, a member of the Melbourne Anarchist Club from 1886-90 and there became friends with Sam Rosa (qv) and Jack Andrews (qv). In 1899 he was elected to the Trades Hall Eight Hours Day committee and to the executive of Trades Hall Council. For more than fifty years he was a regular speaker at the Queens Wharf and Yarra Bank (Melbourne) Sunday speakers’ corners. In 1889, Fleming helped form a Melbourne lodge of the Knights of Labor (qv) in Melbourne, as well as being elected to the Eight Hours Committee. In 1907 he invited Emma Goldman (qv) to tour Australia and had raised money for her fare but her plans to come in March, 1908 were curtailed by problems with her love affair with Dr Ben Reitman. For every year from 1887 he commemorated in Melbourne the execution of the Haymarket Martyrs (qv).
Flying Pieman, The (William Francis King; 1807 - 1873), celebrated Sydney eccentric known for his long-distance walking. On one occasion, the story goes, he balanced a 40kg live goat and a 5.4kg weight and walked from the old Talbot Inn, Brickfield Hill, Sydney to the Woolpack Inn, Parramatta, in less than seven hours. It has been said he sold his pies at Circular Quay to passengers boarding the ferry, then would meet them when they disembarked at Parramatta some 25km away. Twice he beat the Sydney to Windsor mail coach on foot.
Fogg, Phileas, fictional character in the novel Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne (qv).
Fourier, Charles (François Marie Charles Fourier; François Fourier; April 7, 1772 - October 10, 1837), French philosopher, economist and utopian socialist. Fourier inspired the founding of the communist community called La Réunion near present-day Dallas, Texas as well as several other communities within the USA such as the Wisconsin Phalanx. Fourier was the son of a linen draper, and was born at Besançon, France. After working as a haberdasher’s clerk, and a merchant, he was drafted into the army in 1796, but after two years was discharged as an invalid. In 1808 he published a book about his plans for the reconstruction of society, but it sold less than a dozen copies. However, after six years, a copy of it fell into the hands of a wealthy man named Monsieur Just Muiron, who read it avidly and decided to become the author’s patron. Between the years 1816-21 Fourier lived in the country and produced the bulk of his writings. In 1822 he tried again to sell his books, but without success. In 1825 he went to Lyons and worked as a cashier at only 50 pounds a year. He later got another patron, Madame Clarissa Vigoureux. His ideas were utopian, envisioning hierarchies of satisfied workers doing what they loved doing. He was a believer in the passionate good and ‘attractive’ labour, and he invented ‘Gastrosophy’, the philosophy of food. Hundreds of communes called ‘phalansteries’ sprouted in the mid-19th Century, celebrating his principles and vision.
Fox, Sir William KCMG (January 20, 1812 - June 23, 1893), Premier of New Zealand on four occasions in the 19th Century, while New Zealand was still a colony. He helped shape the Constitution Act of 1852, which established home rule for New Zealand.
Franklin, Miles (Stella Martin Sara Miles Franklin; October 14, 1879 - September 19, 1954), Australian author, who was ‘discovered’ by Henry Lawson. The unknown teenage Franklin wrote to the famous Lawson and he replied from Chaplin Cottage, Charles St, North Sydney on December 29, 1899 (beginning “Mr M. Franklin, Dear sir ...” and an apology for his tardy reply, saying “Send your yarn and I'll read it and tell you what I think of it”. Young Miss Franklin had obviously written to the great Lawson hoping he would read her novel and was in no position to arrange anything. Ensuing Lawson correspondence with Franklin, David Scott Mitchell (qv) and George Robertson (qv) shows Lawson’s enthusiasm for the novel (My Brilliant Career) and his efforts to have it published, at a time that he himself was feeling the pangs of destitution. Franklin was born at Talbingo, NSW and grew up in the Brindabella Valley. Her most famous book was originally called My Brilliant? Career and Franklin was extremely distressed when the publisher removed the question mark; Lawson’s preface also aggrieved her as she wanted to maintain a disguise as a “bald headed steer of the sterner sex”, believing that that if people thought she was a man the book would receive better reviews, but the reviews tended to be very good, as did public acceptance. On publication of My Brilliant Career Franklin became a celebrity but despite critical acclaim, Franklin was only paid £25 for her efforts. It is believed that Banjo Paterson (qv), who was smitten with her, proposed marriage. In 1906, Franklin moved to the USA and undertook secretarial work for Alice Henry, another Australian, at the National Women’s Trade Union League in Chicago, and co-edited the league's magazine, Life and Labor. In her will she bequeathed her estate to establish a now-prestigious annual literary award known as The Miles Franklin Award.
Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria (December 18, 1863 - June 28, 1914). His assassination by Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo, Austrian-annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, precipitated the Austrian declaration of war against Serbia which triggered World War I. Franz Ferdinand was nephew of the Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria and next in line to the crown. Franz Ferdinand arrived in Sydney, Australia on May 17, 1893 on board the Austrian warship Kaiser Elisabeth on a world tour when he was 29. Within 24 hours of his arrival he left Sydney by train for Nyngan, a frontier town in the west of NSW, accompanied by Francis Bathurst Suttor (qv), Member for Bathurst and Minister for Public Instruction in the Government of Sir George Dibbs (qv), and Herr Alfred Pelldram, the German Consul-General. He spent most of his time in Australia hunting in the Nyngan and Narromine districts, but also travelled to Moss Vale in the Southern Highlands of NSW. In his diary he noted that he did not think much of Australian campfire-cooked meals.
Fraser, Sir Symon (or Simon) of Neidpath (d. 1306), Scottish national hero; a nobleman whose forces trrrrounced the English forces of King Edward I (qv) at the Battle of Rosslyn or Roslin Muir on February 24, 1303. Later he fought for King Robert I of Scotland (Robert the Bruce). For a time he fought alongside William Wallace.
Fuller, Sir George (January 22, 1861 - July 22, 1940), Premier of NSW on two occasions during the 1920s. His first term of office lasted less than one day (December 20, 1921); his second lasted from April 13, 1922 to June 17, 1925. From 1928 to 1931 he was the NSW Agent-General in London.
Galsworthy, John (August 14, 1867 - January 31, 1933), English writer best known for The Forsyte Saga (1906 - 1921) and its sequels. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1932. One of his mentors was Edward Garnett (qv).
Garnett, Edward (February 9, 1868 - February 21, 1937), English writer, critic and a significant and personally generous literary editor, who was instrumental in getting DH Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers published. His father Richard Garnett (1835-1906) was a writer and librarian at the British Museum. His wife was Constance Garnett, known for her translations of Russian literature, and for introducing (with Edward) the English-speaking world to Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Gogol, Goncharov, Pushkin, Turgenev and Ostrovsky. Garnett apparently had little formal education, but educated himself by reading very widely. He gained a high reputation at the time for a mixture of good sense and sensitivity in relation to contemporary literature. His influence though his encouragement of leading authors exceeded by far that of his own writing. His literary contacts and correspondents spread far and wide, from Peter Kropotkin (qv) to Edward Thomas. He worked as an editor and reader for the London publishing houses of TF Unwin Ltd, Duckworth and Co., and then Jonathan Cape. He brought together in 1898 Joseph Conrad (qv), an Unwin author to whom he acted as a mentor as well as a friend, and Ford Madox Ford; they collaborated in the first few years of the 20th Century. Garnett befriended DH Lawrence, and for a time influenced him in the direction of realist fiction. He also had a role in getting the work of TE Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’) published. One of his failures was to turn down for Duckworth James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in 1915. He was a strong supporter of John Galsworthy (qv), and The Man of Property in the Forsyte Saga was dedicated to him. He also championed American writers Stephen Crane (qv) and Robert Frost, and Australia’s Henry Lawson.
George, Henry (September 2, 1839 - October 29, 1897), American political economist, and the most influential proponent of the ‘Single Tax’ on land, perhaps best known for his book Progress and Poverty. In 1886 George ran for mayor of New York, and polled second (ahead of Theodore Roosevelt). In his day he was so famous he was an icon for merchandising; for example, boxes of Henry George cigars were sold, as there were those named for Mark Twain (qv). It has been claimed he was the third most famous man in the USA, behind only Twain and Thomas Edison. His ideas were taken up to some degree in South Africa, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Australia – where State governments still levy a Land Value Tax, albeit low and with many exemptions. An attempt by the Liberal Government of the day to implement them in 1909 as part of the budget caused a crisis in Britain which led indirectly to reform of the House of Lords. Henry George was familiar with the work of Karl Marx (qv) – and predicted that if Marx’s ideas were tried the likely result would be a dictatorship. Many were heavily influenced by him, such as George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Sun Yat Sen, Herbert Simon, and David Lloyd George. A follower of George, Lizzie Magie, a Virginia Quaker, created the original board game Monopoly in 1904 to demonstrate his theories. In 1890 George was in Australia for more than three months on a popular 38-town lecture tour. Henry Lawson mentions him in ‘A Day on a Selection’, in While the Billy Boils, 1896. An estimated 100,000 people attended George’s funeral.
Gibbs, May, (January 17, 1877 - 1969) English-born Australian children’s author, creator of the enduring children’s classic characters, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, the gumnut babies. She worked as a political cartoonist in Perth before going to Sydney and working for The Bulletin. The Gumnut Babies, her first book about Australian bush fairies, was published in 1916 in Sydney.
Gilmore, Dame Mary, (née Mary Cameron; August 16, 1865 - December 3, 1962), Australian poet, utopian socialist, friend of socialist William Lane (qv) and fellow poet Henry Lawson, later a member of the Australian Communist Party. She had a close relationship with Henry Lawson who once asked her to marry him. When Billy Lane led several hundred (figures vary according to source) Australians on the Royal Tar to Paraguay to form a utopian community, Gilmore was the colony’s schoolteacher and ‘newspaper’ editor (the paper was read out daily to the colonists). After her return to Australia some six years later (she and her husband William Gilmore, a shearer by trade, were among the first to leave Cosme, disillusioned), she continued to write poetry and became active in campaigns for the aged and under-privileged. In her day, and for several decades, she was certainly Australia’s best-known woman poet. Her works include Marri’d and Other Verses (1910), The Tilted Cart (1925), The Wild Swan (1930), Old Days, Old Ways (1934) More Recollections (1935) and Fourteen Men (1954). In 1908 she was women’s editor of Worker, the newspaper of Australia’s largest and most powerful trade union, the AWU (qv). Before her death at 97 she had a succession of housekeepers – nine came and went in six months – many of them leaving in exasperation. On Thursday, December 6, 1962, Sydney witnessed the first State funeral granted an Australian writer since that of Henry Lawson forty years earlier. Like her former beau, Henry Lawson, her image appeared on the Australian $10 note, or, rather images, for the banknote features an early photograph as well as the controversial portrait painted in her later years by Sir William Dobell. Dame Mary Gilmore’s ashes were buried in her husband’s grave at Cloncurry cemetery, Sydney.
Goldman, Emma (June 27, 1869 - May 14, 1940), Lithuanian-born American anarchist writer and activist, pioneer advocate of free love and contraception who was deported to the Soviet Union for inciting World War I draft riots in New York. Outspoken birth control advocate and champion of women’s rights, Goldman wrote My Disillusionment in Russia; Anarchism & Other Essays; The Place of the Individual in Society. In 1907, according to Goldman’s autobiography, Living My Life, Melbourne anarchist Chummy Fleming (qv) invited her to tour Australia and Australian anarchists had raised money for her fare. In 1908 she made preparations to go (she was to embark on the Makura at Vancouver on March 26, 1909), and 1,500 pounds of literature was despatched ahead. In April, Fleming wrote in the Melbourne Socialist that she had embarked, believing it to be so, but events had intervened, including police harassment and the US immigration department organising her deportation, but also a fit of jealousy over her lover, Dr Ben Reitman, whose sexual liaisons she was finding a challenge, despite her ideology.
Gordon, Jim (James William Gordon; 1874 - 1949), writer (‘Beside the Cypress Pine’; ‘The Old Home’; ‘Henry Lawson on the Track’; ‘Among My Own People’; ‘Back to the Bush’; ‘The Belittling of Lawson’), companion of Henry Lawson on his tramps around Bourke and Hungerford in 1892-3, and memoirist of this and other events in Lawson’s life. He is thought to be the model for one of Lawson’s central fictional characters, ‘Mitchell’. He hailed from Creswick, Victoria and it has been said that he was born under a tilted cart. Gordon later became a published author, sometimes under the nom de plume ‘Jim Grahame’. Twenty-four years later Gordon was residing in Leeton when Lawson lived there from January 1916 to September 1917, and they knocked around together again as in their ‘days when the world was wide’.
Grey, Sir George (April 14, 1812 - September 19, 1898) writer, explorer, soldier, Governor of South Australia, twice Governor of New Zealand, Governor of Cape Colony (South Africa), Premier of New Zealand.
Griffith, Sir Samuel (June 21, 1845 - August 9, 1920), Australian politician and judge, the principal author of the Constitution of Australia. Griffith was Premier of Queensland (1883-88), and was knighted in 1886.
Griffo, Young (Albert Griffiths; March 31, 1871 - December 7, 1927), Australian boxer. Young Griffo grew up in the tough dockside district of Millers Point in Sydney. There he sold newspapers for a living and learned to bare-knuckle fight. In 1894 he left Sydney (coincidentally, on the same steamship that RL Stevenson departed Sydney from for the last time) and in New York City he became Lightweight Boxing Champion of the World. (If there is dispute about the title it would appear to be that there were two world championships running at the time, with different British and American rules.) He was the star of Young Griffo vs. Battling Charles Barnett (filmed on the roof of Madison Square Garden, May 4, 1895), the first motion picture in the world to be screened before a paying audience. It premiered at 153 Broadway in New York City on May 20, 1895, more than seven months before the Lumière brothers showed their film at the Grand Cafe on the Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, on December 18 – the event usually said to be the first movie-by-ticket screening in the world. His brilliant career in the USA came to a grinding end in New York City in 1895, at the peak of his international fame, after he was convicted of sexually abusing William Gottlieb, an 11-year-old boy. Griffiths spent the last three decades of his life drinking himself to death, and famously sat vacantly for years begging in Times Square, a familiar figure on the steps of the Rialto Theater. Griffo is the usual Australian nickname for anyone named Griffiths.
Habens, William (June 17, 1839 - February 3, 1899), New Zealand clergyman and Inspector General of Schools.
Hall, Ben (May 9?, 1837 - May 5, 1865), noted Australian bushranger (qv) whose gang paid a number of visits to Braidwood to intercept gold coaches on their way to Goulburn and Sydney.
Hardie, James Keir (August 15, 1856 - September 26, 1915), Scottish socialist and labour leader, a founder of the British Labour Party, the first Labour MP to be elected to the UK Parliament.
Hardin, John Wesley (May 26, 1853 - August 19, 1895) American Old West outlaw and gunman.
Hargrave, Lawrence (January 29, 1850 - July 6, 1915), Australian engineer, astronomer, explorer, aeronautical pioneer and inventor of the box kite. On November 12, 1894, he linked four of his kites together, and flew beneath it for about five metres. Hargrave believed that a “patentee is nothing but a legal robber”, preferring his inventions to be used for the betterment of mankind. Wilbur Wright contacted him in 1900 about the use of his aircraft models; Hargrave replied that he had no patents, his aeronautical discoveries being “at the disposal of all”. Lawrence Hargrave and Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell shared a friendship and a scientific curiosity about the applications of Hargrave’s box kite invention and its developments for aviation. Lawrence Hargrave lived on Woollahra Point, Sydney from 1902 to 1915. He used to like strolling on the water across Double Bay wearing on his feet a sort of inflated snow-shoe. Hargrave was buried at Waverley Cemetery (qv), Sydney.
Harte, (Francis) Bret (August 25, 1836 - May 6, 1902), American author (The Luck of the Roaring Camp; The Outcasts of Poker Flat) best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California; he lived in London from 1885.
Haymarket Martyrs: August Spies, Albert Parsons (qv), Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden and Oscar Neebe, all charged with murder after the Haymarket Riot of May 4, 1886, in Chicago, USA. Fielden’s and Schwab’s capital sentences were commuted to life in prison. On the eve of his scheduled execution, Lingg committed suicide in his cell. The others were hanged on November 11, 1887. Hooded, and marched to the gallows, they sang the Marseillaise, at that time the anthem of the international revolutionary movement. August Spies was widely quoted as having shouted out, “The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.” On June 26, 1893, Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab after having concluded all eight defendants were not guilty. Their case is the origin of international May Day observances.
Haynes, John (April 26, 1850 - August 15, 1917), Australian (NSW) parliamentarian for five months short of thirty years, and co-founder (1880), with JF Archibald (qv), of The Bulletin (qv). In The Bulletin’s earlier years he once spent thirteen weeks in prison for libel (the public raised £3,000 and he was released). In 1891, Haynes was ratepayer on several Sydney addresses that were the focus of radical and even anarchist activity in Sydney (Leigh House, Active Service Brigade HQ and McNamara’s (qv) Book Depot). Through the courts he pursued the corrupt NSW politicians William Patrick Crick (qv) (Haynes knocked him down in a fight in 1893) and William Nicholas Willis (qv), the latter all the way to South Africa. He was later editor of the Newsletter, which in 1906 attacked fellow parliamentarian and Truth publisher, John Norton (qv) as a criminal and murderer.
Head, Walter (December 28, 1861 - February 28, 1939), poet, journalist, editor and organiser for New Australia (qv). The son of the first white man born in the Melbourne district, he became involved in the trade union movement and worked as an organiser for the Shearers’ Union. He co-founded (with Arthur Rae, qv) The Hummer, a labor newspaper originally published in Wagga Wagga, NSW, for which Mary Cameron (see Mary Gilmore) was a freelance journalist from Sydney. Head moved to Sydney in 1893 and renamed his newspaper Worker. Mary Cameron introduced him to William Lane’s (qv) movement and he not only became active in it, his office at 111 Elizabeth St became the headquarters and from 1892-3 he edited New Australia. Just before Head and his family were due to leave for Paraguay, his infant son Rowland was lost and never found, in the bush at Gippsland, Victoria where his wife was visiting relatives. (Henry Lawson wrote a fictional story about lost children, ‘The Babies in the Bush’, and used the name of his associate Walter Head as that of the main character, a drover: “His name was Head – Walter Head. He was a boss drover on the overland routes”). This tragedy, and controversy surrounding New Australia finances (following the split at New Australia – it is unlikely he did anything unethical), disrupted Head’s life immeasurably, precipitating the end of his marriage. He found it necessary to ‘disappear’ and he fled first to New Zealand under the alias ‘Walter Ashe Woods’, and soon after to Tasmania under the alias of ‘Walter Alan Woods’. ‘Walter Woods’ became one of the founders of the Tasmanian Labor Party, holding a seat in the Tasmanian House of Assembly from 1906 until 1931, becoming known as the ‘Father of the Tasmanian Parliament’ (Speaker of the House 1914-16, and 1926-28). His also edited the influential Labor newspaper The Clipper. He remarried in 1910 and had two further children. His son Wally emigrated to New Australia, never returning to Australia and eventually settling in North America.
Hoffmeister, Samuel ‘Frenchy’ (d. 1894), shearer and union activist, quite likely an anarchist, who probably was one of about sixteen raiders who burned down a shearing shed at Dagworth Station, Queensland, on September 1, 1894, though there are divergent opinions on this. The shed was guarded and ninety shots were fired. Hoffmeister went into hiding after his alleged arson, and might or might not have stolen a sheep to survive in his flight from the Queensland police with a £1,000 reward on his head. He was pursued by the ‘squatter’ of Dagworth, Bob Macpherson, and three ‘troopers’, Senior Constables Michael Daly, Robert Dyer, and Austin Cafferty, and found shot dead beside a billabong; the coroner declared it was suicide. Banjo Paterson (qv), who visited Dagworth in early 1895, wrote an anodyne version of the incident in ‘Waltzing Matilda’, with the melody provided by Christina Macpherson, whose brothers owned Dagworth. The song enjoyed a brief period of official recognition as the Australian national song (coexisting with ‘Advance Australia Fair’ as the National Anthem).
Holland, Harry (Henry Edmund Holland; June 10, 1868 - October 8, 1933), NSW-born New Zealand writer (Red Roses on the Highways, 1924), politician and unionist. In 1890 Holland, unemployed, left the Salvation Army, believing that its response to poverty was inadequate, joining the small Australian Socialist League two years later. Following this, with his friend Tom ‘The Vag’ Batho, he began a career of socialist journalism, launching Sydney’s Socialist in October 1894. The year 1896 saw him convicted of libelling the superintendent of the NSW Labour Bureau, and he served three months in prison. On his release, he transferred his newspaper to Newcastle, calling it Socialist Journal of the Northern People, then in 1900 he published it out of Sydney as People. In 1901 he organised the Tailoresses’s Union of NSW. In 1909, after having worked editing labor papers in Grenfell and Queanbeyan and launching the International Socialist Review for Australasia, Holland was convicted of sedition (he had advocated violent revolution against capitalism during the Broken Hill miners’ strike) and was jailed for two years. Standing as a Revolutionary Socialist, he was defeated by W M Hughes (qv) in the 1910 Federal elections. The labor movement widely condemned Holl