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Francis Edmund (Ted) Miller (1879–1935)

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Francis Edmund (Ted) Miller,  (1879-1935) carter and trade union leader 

Birth: 1879 in Cooma, New South Wales, eldest son of Edmund Percival Miller, labourer, and Margaret Sarah, née Chapman (1849-1912). Marriage: 1 June 1914 at St John’s Bishopthorpe, Glebe, NSW, to Nance Smyth (1893-1967), shop assistant later railway employee. Death: 11 October 1935 in Sydney Hospital. Religion: Anglican. 

  • Served as a trooper with the 1st Battalion, Imperial Light Horse, in the South African War.
  • Official of NSW Trolley, Draymen and Carters' Union, holding positions of minute secretary, vice-president, president and organiser (1924). Unsuccessfully contested positions of secretary and organiser, 1921.
  • He was secretary of his union from March 1925 to September 1931, when he resigned. Advocated amalgamation with the Federated Carters and Drivers' Union as union's only means of securing coverage of growing passenger transport sector. Elected provisional treasurer of proposed Amalgamated Road Transport Union of Australia in October 1925. Pro-Jack Lang, although after World War I had toyed with Left of Labor Party.
  • An alderman on Glebe Council from 1922 to 1928, in June 1930 he was elected alderman for Phillip Ward on the Municipal Council of Sydney. He was obliged to relinquish this position in September 1931 when the Lang government appointed him to “an office of profit under the Crown”, viz. membership of the newly-formed State Transport Co-ordination Board. The board was discontinued in 1932.
  • In 1930 Miller had contested the seat of Burwood for Labor in the Legislative Assembly elections.
  • He was a member of the NSW Masonic Club and Lodge Glebe, No. 96, United Grand Lodge of NSW.
  • Died after an operation for the removal of a fish-bone from his throat. Cause of death given as perineal cellulitis and pelvic peritonitis. His brother Alfred, a jockey, had been killed at Cootamundra several years previously.

Sources
Mark Bray & Andrew Rimmer, Delivering the Goods; the Transport Workers’ Union in New South Wales 1888-1986 (Sydney, 1987).

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Citation details

'Miller, Francis Edmund (Ted) (1879–1935)', People Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://peopleaustralia.anu.edu.au/biography/miller-francis-edmund-ted-32660/text40555, accessed 1 April 2025.

© Copyright People Australia, 2012

Life Summary [details]

Birth

1879
Cooma, New South Wales, Australia

Death

11 October, 1935 (aged ~ 56)
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Cause of Death

perineal cellulitis

Religious Influence

Includes the religion in which subjects were raised, have chosen themselves, attendance at religious schools and/or religious funeral rites; Atheism and Agnosticism have been included.

Occupation or Descriptor
Military Service
Key Organisations
Political Activism
Workplaces