People Australia

James Francis (Jim) Luttrell (1875-1944) shop assistant and trade union organiser

Birth: 14 April 1875 at Tipperary, Ireland, son of John Luttrell (1842-1917), labourer, and Johanna (Judy), née Pollard (1846-1916). Marriage: 27 November 1901 at Brisbane, Queensland, to native-born Ivy Clementia Panton (1883-1943). Death: 13 March 1944 in hospital at Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales; late of King Street, Randwick, Sydney. Religion: Catholic. 

• Arrived at Cooktown, Queensland, as a child on 14 September 1883 with parents and siblings aboard the Nowshera. Family settled at Rockhampton.
• Participated in events in Labor movement in the 1890s.
• Was a draper and a shop assistant at Coorparoo in Queensland. An advocate for the abolition of late-night shopping. Participated in developing the Shop Assistants’ Union in Queensland and became a union organiser.
• Moved to Sydney in 1912. That year joined the Shop Assistants’ Union, NSW. Was the union’s NSW councillor about 1913, vice-president in 1915 and organiser from about 1920 to at least 1940. Represented the union on various conciliation committees. President of the Early Closing League in 1927.
• Justice of the peace by March 1924.
• Gained life membership of the Shop Assistants’ Union, in 1939. Assistant secretary of NSW Branch and general president of the Shop Assistants’ and Warehouse Federation from 1940 until death.
• Union executive paid tribute to him by furnishing and endowing a room in King George V Memorial Hospital, Camperdown.
• Cause of death: cerebral haemorrhage (3 hours), arterial hypertension (5 years) and arteriosclerosis (10 years).

Sources
Labor Daily (Sydney), 13 January 1927, p 7; Shop Assistant, January 1939, vol. 19 no. 5, October 1940 ,vol. 19 no. 12 p 13, April-June 1944, vol. 21 no.5 p.3, July-September 1945, vol. 21 no. 11 p 16.