People Australia

Darby Riordan, n.d.

David (Darby) Riordan (1886-1936) railway worker, trade union official and parliamentarian

Birth: 23 July 1888 at Mackay, Queensland, son of Irish-born parents William Riordan (1858-1927), a timberworker, later carrier, from Cork, and Mary, née Walsh (1859-1940), from Ardrahan, Galway. Marriage: 16 April 1913 at Cairns to Queensland-born Gertrude Anne Purcell (1888-1969). They had two daughters. Death: 15 October 1936 in Mater Misericordiae Hospital at South Brisbane, Queensland. Religion: Catholic. 

• Educated at Mackay and Cairns state schools. Worked as a labourer, railway constructor in timber and mining camps, railway guard on Etheridge and Chillagoe lines till 1918. Official with Australian Workers’ Union.
• Elected member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly for Burke on 16 March 1918. Resigned in September 1929.
• Elected member of the Australian House of Representatives for seat of Kennedy on 12 October 1929. Died in office. Executive member of the parliamentary Labor party 1932-1936. In 1922 as a member of Labor Party Caucus voted with seven others against Theodore Cabinet’s proposal to reduce the basic wage in awards of government employees.
• In 1927 he condemned the Labor McCormack Government’s issuing an ultimatum dismissing 18000 railway workers because of their union support in a dispute involving South Johnstone sugar workers.
• Cause of death: cholelithiasis, myocarditis and syncope.
• Brother of William James MLC (Qld) and Ernest Riordan, MLA, uncle of William James Frederick Riordan, MHR, who succeeded in the seat of Kennedy.
• His widow survived being struck by a train in April 1953.

Sources
Who’s Who in Australia 1933-1935; Courier Mail, 16 October 1936; L. F. Crisp & S. P. Bennett, Australian Labor Party: federal personnel 1901-1954, (Canberra, 1954); Duncan Bruce Waterson, Biographical register of the Queensland Parliament 1860-1929 (Sydney, 2001); Advocate, 15 October 1936.