People Australia

Francis Joseph O'Brien (1883-1952) farmer, shearing shed expert and trade unionist

Birth: 1883 at Balmain, Sydney, New South Wales, son of David O’Brien (1839-1883), a labourer, born at Meeting of the Waters, Wicklow, Ireland, and Elizabeth Johanna (1858-1943), née Melton, later Gaffney and then Kelly (1859-1943), born at Bathurst, NSW. Marriage: 18 October 1910 at St Mary’s Church, Bingara, NSW, to Ethel Maude Bowman (1892-1989), born at Bingara. They had two sons. Death: 23 May 1952 in his residence at James Street, Leichhardt. Religion: Catholic. 

• His father died in the year of Francis’s birth and, in 1885 his mother, a widow with five children, married Dublin-born Daniel Gaffney (1859-1902), wheelwright, and moved to Bourke, then Brewarrina, where Gaffney died, leaving his widow with his surviving son and his four step-children. She married John Kelly (1870-1956), a freeholder, in Brewarrina in 1911.
• On his marriage registration Francis gave his occupation as a farmer, living at Cooringoora, near Bingara, NSW. In 1913-1914 he was a labourer living at Bingara. In electoral rolls in the 1930s and 1940s he was described as an engine-driver, living at James Street, Lilyfield (Leichhardt).
• He was possibly the Francis J. O’Brien who, in about 1906, had been injured in a fall of stone at the Hillgrove gold mine, losing the sight of one eye.
• In 1918, while employed grinding a cutter, by the Federal Sheep Shearing Co at Bygoo shearing shed, Ardlethan, he was struck in the other eye with a piece of stone and became totally blind.
• An executive member of the newly-formed United Blind Workers’ Union, in October 1931 he was appointed the union’s delegate to the NSW Labor Council. Each Thursday night, he would make his way by tram, unaided, to the Trades Hall to attend meetings.
• Soon after becoming a delegate, he urged an improvement in the conditions of workers at the Sydney Industrial Blind Institute, in William Street, Sydney. His dismissal from the institute, managed by Henry J. Hedger, followed, and he was forced to eke out a living selling cigarettes and tobacco.
• NSW Labor Council wrote to the Blind Institute, protesting against his victimisation. The letter claimed that he had been dismissed due to union activity involving him promoting better wages and conditions over a sustained period. When the institute’s officials refused to discuss the matter a deputation was appointed to interview the State government.
• O’Brien continued to sell smokes and sweets at Australian Labor Party Easter conferences.
• Interviewed in 1940 he said “before I suffered my affliction I knew personally a great many of the men who attend the conference. Now as I sit here in the corridor and listen to the debates through loud speakers, I can picture my old friends and enjoy their speeches all over again. I can tell most of them by their voices.”
• In 1940 he was nominated for election to the ALP central executive. “Of course, I don’t expect to be elected, but it gives me a lot of pleasure to realise that my affliction does not influence the democratic principles of election to the executive”.
• He was also proud that he was never robbed. “I just sit by my tray and the buyers select what they like and give me the money. I do not know what they have taken or whether they have given me the right money. But I trust them.”
• Cause of death: heart disease (coroner’s verdict).
• Henry George Wilston (1892-1985) was also a delegate of the United Blind Workers Union in 1931. Nurse Susan Francis and Myra Agnes Huntress (1891-1984) were sighted women who also supported it.

Sources
Trades and Labor Council minutes.