People Australia

Gilbert Mark (Bert) Ridgway [also known as Ridgeway] (1891-1967) engine driver, railway employee and trade union official

Birth: 3 April 1891 at Drayton, Queensland, son of English-born parents Thomas Ridgway (1837-1922), a shearer, from Thornborough, Buckinghamshjre, and Amy, née Lindsay (1851-1922), from London, Middlesex. Marriage: 14 February 1910 at Toowoomba, Queensland, to native-born Rachel (or Rachael) Goodwin (1886-1974). They had two sons and five daughters, two of whom died in infancy. The couple seem to have separated by 1933. Death: 13 June 1967 at Toowoomba General Hospital, Queensland. Religion: Anglican. 

• His father, a farm labourer, had arrived in New South Wales aboard the Lloyds on 1 August 1855.
• Bert was employed as a cleaner in the Queensland railways in 1907, was a fireman 1910 and a driver in 1916.
• Honorary instructor in locomotive breakdowns and theoretical knowledge on the locomotive and Westinghouse brake in Toowoomba, and regularly contributed to The Headlight which was the publication of Queensland division of the Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Enginemen (AFULE). Branch secretary of the AFULE Toowoomba.
• Employee representative on enquiry board, South-Western Division, Toowoomba. Full-time assistant divisional secretary AFULE in Queensland from 1927 to 1939. Assistant general secretary AFULE in federal office in Melbourne 1939.
• Returned to Brisbane in 1944 when elected secretary of the Queensland branch of the AFULE.
• Federal general secretary in 1948 and moved again to Melbourne where he stayed until his retirement about 1956.
• Representative of Australian Transport Workers Unions to International Labor Organization committee opening, Geneva, in 1954.
• Cause of death: ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm, aortic atheroma and myocardial infarct (old).
• His elder son Gilbert George Clifford Ridgway (1911-1988) was a chaplain in the Royal Air Force. His younger son Flight Sergeant John Thomas Ridgway (1918-1945), a farm hand and shop assistant, served in the Royal Australian Air Force and was presumed killed in air operations over France on 3 June 1944.

Sources
Locomotive Journal, 23 November 1938, p 3, 14 September 1939, p 63, 10 February 1949, p 31, 11 February 1954, p 10, 12 October 1967 p 32.