People Australia

Richard (Dick) Blamire (1855-1914) brickmaker, miner, municipal employee, trade union leader 

Birth: 11 February 1855 in Preston, Lancashire, England, son of Anthony Blamire (1815-1900), outdoor labourer, later brick merchant, and Maria, née Sinkinson (1819-1892) who signed with a mark. Marriage: 31 March 1880 with Primitive Methodist forms at Stanmore, Sydney, New South Wales, to native-born Emma Jane Clissold. They had five sons and four daughters. Death: 8 July 1914 in Marrickville, Sydney, NSW. Religion: Methodist. 

• The Blamire family had arrived in NSW by 1870, when Anthony was a brickmaker at Marrickville. Dick was secretary of the Stephen Loyal Orange Lodge [LOL] No. 117, in Marrickville, in 1878. In 1881 he signed with a mark a petition as resident of Canterbury, Sydney, where he was living when he advertised for the whereabouts of his missing brother John in April 1886. By October that year he was worshipful master of No. 196 LOL Canterbury.
• In 1892 he was a builder, living at Marrickville. Moved to Western Australia during the 1890s gold rush.
• Foundation member of Amalgamated Workers’ Association (AWA), Kalgoorlie and Boulder branch, with brother John Blamire and Fred Gilbert. Secretary, Kalgoorlie and Boulder Branch of AWA from 1897 to 1901.
• Builder of Boulder Workers' Hall with Fred Gilbert (reopened as a museum in 2000). AWA delegate and president of Kalgoorlie and District Trades and Labor Council.
• In 1902 resigned from AWA to return to his family in NSW. Worked on the government railways, and was a labourer on the municipal council at Marrickville at the time of his sudden death, from heart failure.

Sources
Info from biographical files held in Battye Library; Western Argus, 4 May 1899 p 14; Star, 29 October 1917; Family Group Sheet (in Fred Gilbert file); Minutes of Proceedings of the First Western Australian Trades Union and Labor Conference 11-15 April 1899 at Coolgardie WA.