People Australia

Ephraim Coombe, 1902

State Library of South Australia, b21065597

Ephraim Henry Coombe (1858-1917) journalist and parliamentarian 

Birth: 26 August 1858 at Gawler, South Australia, eldest of three surviving children of English-born parents Ephraim Coombe (1826-1908), a farm-labourer, later shopkeeper and postmaster, from Swimbridge, North Devon, and his first wife Mary, née Lock (1836-1864), from Winfrith Newurgh, Dorset. After her death her widower married Elizabeth Tall (1820-1901) in 1866. Marriage: 1 March 1880 at Adelaide to Sarah Susannah Fraser Heywood (1861-1923), born at Footscray, Melbourne, Victoria. They had three daughters and four sons. Death: 5 April 1917 at Semaphore, SA. 

• Chief spokesman of anti-conscriptionist cause during World War I in Adelaide.
• Died while speaking at Botanic Park, heart attack ‘brought on by his strenuous effort against militarism’.
• Cause of death: cerebral haemorrhage.
• Three of his sons served in World War I. His eldest, Harry Heywood Coombe (1880-1918), a mechanical engineer, who had been selected to succeed his father in parliament, was killed in action serving with the 10th Battalion in France in World War I. 

Sources
Jim Moss, Sound of trumpets: history of the labour movement in South Australia (Adelaide, 1985).