People Australia

Jane Lindsay (also known as Lindsay Jane), Mountjoy, née Eatock, later Brown (1907-1988) Indigenous social activist, textile worker, bus conductor, trade unionist and Communist 

Birth: 5 April 1907 at Winton, Queensland, daughter of William Eatock (1869-1943, drover, and Lucy Harriet, née Wakenshaw (1874-1950). Marriages: (1) 23 December 1927 at the Registrar’s Office, Bankstown, Sydney, New South Wales, to Wilfred Athelstane (Bill) Mountjoy (1901-1966), brickmaker and Communist. They had one daughter. The marriage ended in divorce. (2) 1967 at Sydney to Sydney-born James Brown (1902-1995), a labourer. Death: 4 November 1988 in her usual residence at Macarthur Parade, Woy Woy, NSW. 

• Aboriginal activist and member of the Communist Party of Australia. At her marriage in 1927 she was described as an umbrella cutter, living at Bankstown.
• In November 1931, she was included, with her husband, mother and two brothers, in the Smith’s Weekly’s list of Who’s Who in Communism. She was described as “Intelligent and a good speaker”, living at St John’s Road, Glebe.
• At Perth, Western Australia, in 1932, she was involved in unemployed disturbances, for which she was fined. On one occasion, Katherine Susannah Pritchard provided a bond for her.
• In October 1941, a textile worker at Alexandria Spinning, Mills Pty Ltd, Sydney, and a member of the Textile Workers’ Union, she was dismissed for calling a fellow worker a scab and provoking an altercation which caused both women to be dismissed.
• Described as a bus conductress in the Tribune in 1945.
• Cause of death; congestive cardiac failure and hypertension.

Sources
G. C. Bolton, ‘Unemployment and Politics in Western Australia’, in Labor History, No.17, The Great Depression in Australia, November 1969, pp 94-95.