People Australia

Roy Robert (Don) Rawson (1898-1971) bookseller, Esperantist and parliamentarian

Birth: 11 May 1898 at Woods Point, Victoria, son of native-born parents Robert Rawson (1898-1971), gold miner, and Ellen, née Smith (1866-1948). Marriage: 1925 at Carlton, Melbourne, Victoria, to native-born Florence Elizabeth Mitchell (1889-1975), schoolteacher. They had one son. Death: 14 June 1971 in his usual residence at Mowbray Street, Hawthorn East, Melbourne. 

• Educated at Woods Point state school and Christian Brothers College, South Melbourne. Employed in warehouse of D. &W. Murray, Flinders Lane, at age 14.
• Anti-conscriptionist in 1916; RAN wireless operator 1916-18.
• Joined Melbourne Esperanto Club where he met James Pyke. Became prominent in Esperanto movement, in which he was an international figure and was an Australian Broadcasting Commission speaker on this subject for years.
• Managed Bourke Street tea room 1919-1921 and Swanston Street bookshop from 1922-1927 for G. Pyke. Visited Europe with Pyke in 1921.
• Owned his own Exhibition Street bookshop from 1927 to 1951, headquarters of Book Censorship Abolition League 1934-1936 and from 1936 the Australian Council for Civil Liberties.
• Published many pamphlets and helped set up Left Books in Melbourne. Lived at Upwey from 1951 to 1968. Vice-president of Upwey branch of the Australian Labor Party.
• As an endorsed Labor candidate was elected member of the Victorian Legislative Council, for Southern Division, on 21 June 1952. Was defeated on 21 June 1958.
• One of his hobbies was horticulture, and he was a life member of the Royal Horticultural Society. Member Australian Society for the Study of Labour History.
• Cause of death: cardiac arrest (immediate), cerebral anoxia (12 hours), cerebral haemorrhages – 2 weeks, 5 days and 12 hours ago, carcinoma of prostate with cerebral secondaries (10 years).
• His son, Donald William Rawson (1930-1997), was an historian and political scientist and president of the National Tertiary Education Union, ANU branch, for many years.

Sources
Geoff Browne, Biographical register of the Victorian Parliament, 1900-84 (Melbourne, 1985); Ray Dahlitz, Secular Who's Who: a biographical directory of freethinkers, secularists, rationalists involved in Australia’s secular movement from 1850 onwards, (Melbourne, 1994), The Rationalist Era; Sydney Morning Herald, 30 July 1997; AIRAANZ Newsletter, July 1997 No. 35.