People Australia

Edward Yule (Ned) Lowry (1846-1898) lighterman, anarchist, gaoled trade union official and alderman

Birth: 3 February 1846 at Regents Park, London, Middlesex, England, son of Edward Lucas Lowry (1815-1866), architect and surveyor, and Susanna, née Bennell (1818-1890). Marriage: 9 September 1866 at Dovedale Cottage, Maryborough, Queensland, with Baptist forms, to Ellen (Helen) McKenzie (1848-1914), born at Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland. They had four daughters and seven sons. Death: 15 November 1898, suddenly at the town hall, Townsville, Queensland. Religion: buried with Anglican rites. 

• In the 1861 England census he was a lawyer’s clerk living with his family at Westminster, London. He arrived in Queensland about 1865.
• His occupation in 1878 was lighterman. By August 1882 he was a prominent citizen in Maryborough, a leading light in Oddfellows and Protestant lodges and the founder of the good Templar lodge when he was arrested for systematic robberies of local shopkeepers. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labour for larceny on 11 September 1882.
• Roving agitator and union organiser throughout Queensland. He organised wharf labourers in Mackay and Townsville and campaigned for 8-hour day in North Queensland. Imprisoned at St Helena (Moreton Bay) for 'riotous behaviour' during 1891 shearers' strike. Subsequently was blackbanned by employers.
• Eventually found work as a casual labourer on Townsville wharves, acting as Seamen's Union agent and organiser of waterside workers. Known as an anarchist.
• Candidate for Townsville (South Ward) at Queensland Legislative Assembly elections 1893. Elected alderman on Townsville Municipal Council in June 1895 standing successfully on a platform of municipal socialism. Resigned from council works committee to agitate for minimum wage of 9 shillings per day for all outdoor council employees.
• Campaigned against council welcome for governor and against celebration of Queen's diamond jubilee (1897), exchanging blows in defence of his republicanism. Offered to take the job of governor of Queensland at 10 shillings a day.
• In 1898 sought unsuccessfully to institute direct mayoral election, nominating himself and pledging to redirect mayoral salary to the poor.
• Died whilst attending meeting of local branch of Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Hundreds of workers gathered to pay their last respects.
• Was a friend of Labor politician Tom Foley.
• At his death he was an alderman and agent of the Seamen’s Union at Townsville. Cause of death: syncope (immediate) and heart disease (probably).

Sources
H. J. Gibbney and A. G. Smith, A Biographical Register 1788-1939, vol 2 (Canberra, 1987); Verity Burgmann, Revolutionary Industrial Unionism: The Industrial Workers of the World in Australia (Melbourne, 1985); G. C. Bolton, A thousand miles away (Brisbane, 1963), p 190; Information from Bob James 1952.