People Australia

Hayes, William Charles Joseph (1873-1912) engine-driver and gaoled trade union official 

Birth: 30 May 1873 at Forbes, New South Wales, son of native-born parents of Irish heritage, John James Hayes (1843-1925) and Rebecca, née Stewart (1845-1916). Marriage: 1898 at St Patrick’s Church, Cooma, to native-born Clara Helena Evans (1870-1923). They had four children. Death: 4 July 1912, Lithgow, New South Wales. Religion: Catholic. 

• Engine-driver at Lithgow coal mine from about 1906. Member, Delegate Board of Coal Miners' Mutual Protective Association of the Western District.
• Dismissal by mine owner Charles Hoskins in early 1911 for absenting himself from work to attend Delegate Board meeting triggered rioting and 10-month strike.
• Prosecuted under 1908 ‘Coercion Act’ and imprisoned with John Dixon and other union officials. Sentenced by Judge Pring to fifteen months imprisonment with hard labour, he served seven and a half months. Worked in the boot-making shop “and had nothing to complain of on the score of treatment by the authorities”.
• Released from prison on 3 June 1912, and was met at the gate by his wife and William Brennan, secretary of the Newcastle Collieries’ Association, who had previously been imprisoned in the same gaol.
• Member of the local Hibernian Society.
• Reinstated after strike but was accidentally killed by a train one month after his release from gaol.
• Benefit events were organised by the Trades Hall for his widow and children — the eldest of whom was thirteen.

Sources
Edgar Ross, A history of the Miners' Federation of Australia ([Sydney], 1970.