People Australia

Walter Thomas Middlebrough (1852-1940) French polisher, trade union official and adult educationist 

Birth: 16 April 1852 at Islington, Middlesex, England, son of Richard Middlebrough (1827-1880), painter, and Frances, née Ellingham (b.1821). Marriages: (1) c. 1878 to Emily Ann Jeffs (1844-c.1886), a dressmaker. They had three daughters. (2) A widower, on 23 February 1887 at Sydney, with Congregational forms, he married Susannah Sparks, née Finch, late Gurney (1867-1949), a widow, born at Wellington, New Zealand. They had six daughters and six sons. Death: 16 February 1940 in Royal Hobart Hospital at Hobart, Tasmania. Religion: Congregationalist. 

• Left school aged 11 to work in a cabinet and pianoforte factory. Reputedly associated with the Radical Reform League in England and, at the age of 16, took an active part on the education committee of the Co-operative Movement. He was an ardent trade unionist. In the 1881 census he was a French polisher (unemployed) at Islington, London.
• Some reports have him reaching Melbourne in 1883 where he represented the United Furniture Trade Society on the Trades Hall Council in 1884. He arrived in Sydney in 1885 with his first wife, Emily, and two surviving daughters. Was the president of the local branch of the United Furniture Trade Society in 1885-1886.
• Moved to Adelaide with his second wife in 1887, where the family remained until about 1908. Moved with his large family to Hobart, where he worked as a French polisher, possibly including time at Government House.
• Became active in the Hobart labour movement. President of the Hobart branch of the Federated Furnishing Trades Society.
• Reportedly first president of Hobart Trades Hall Council. Cooperated with Edmund Dwyer-Gray in the campaign to create a daily labour paper – the Daily Post – in 1911-12.
• President of Hobart Eight Hours Demonstration in 1912.
• Supporter of formation of an Australia-wide peak union body – ultimately the Australian Council of Trade Unions (1927).
• Advocate of co-operative movement. Exponent of cause of adult education. In 1913 with the association’s founder, the visiting Albert Mansbridge, he established a branch of the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) in Hobart. For several years with E. Morris Miller he was joint secretary of the WEA; he was made life member in 1929. After his retirement from the WEA, Dwyer-Gray and others founded the Adult Education Group in Tasmania. Middlebrough acted as its secretary until a few years before his death.
• Appointed justice of the peace by 1915.
• Author of Co-operation: A World-wide Movement: What it Means to the Workers (Hobart, 1912) (24pp).
• Pensioner in his later years. Cause of death: prostatic hypertrophy and uraemia.

Sources
The Voice, 17 February 1940; information from John Olley, Canning Vale, Western Australia, 2004.