People Australia

Percy Hunt,

Newcastle Morning Herald (NSW), 17 September 1938, p 9

Percy Hunt (1877-1966) railway employee and trade union official

Birth: 11 September 1877 at Kensington, London, England, son of William Henry (Harry) Hunt (1837-1906), rate collector, and Frances Elizabeth, née Thurston (1846-1917). Marriage: 1901 at Fulham, London, to Catherine Sarah Rodway (1880-1966). They had two daughters and one son. Death: 22 August 1966 at Calvary Hospital, Kogarah, Sydney, New South Wales; usual residence Penshurst Street, Penshurst, Sydney. Religion: Anglican. 

• Possibly the Percy Hunt, 13, who was a boarder at the District Emanuel School, at West Battersea, London, at the time of the 1891 census in England, when his parents and siblings were living at Kensington. In February 1914 he was working as a traveller and living with his wife and children at Queen’s road, Battersea.
• Arrived in New South Wales with his family probably in late 1914.
• Member of Railway Salaried Officers’ Association (RTOA) in 1919.
• In January 1921 he was acting general secretary of the RTOA and from May 1921 was general secretary – at a salary of £450 per annum.
• Was a delegate to the first federal council meeting of the Federation of Salaried Officers of the Commissioners for Railways in various States, held in Sydney in February 1925.
• Was still general secretary of the RTOA in September 1938 when Reg Winsor was president. Retired from RTOA secretaryship in 1940.
• Cause of death: inhalation pneumonia (hours), cerebral arteriosclerosis (months) and carcinoma of prostate (months).

Sources
Greg Patmore, A history of industrial relations in the NSW Government Railways (PhD thesis University of Sydney, 1985); Railway and Tramway Officers’ Gazette, 20 April 1921, 20 December 1939,  p 17, 20 January 1940, p 9.