People Australia

Alfred Rüsfeldt, n.d.

Alfred William Rüsfeldt [or Christian William (surname also shown as Riisfeldt] (1849-1932) seaman, carpenter and Socialist doorkeeper

Birth: 25 August 1849 at Elsinore [Helsingør], Denmark, and registered as Christian William, son of Jörgen Peter (John) Rüsfeldt, bricklayer (1822-1895), and Frederica (Frederikke) Marie, née Hansen (1824-1905). Marriage: 31 August 1880 at St Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney, New South Wales, to Alice Amelia Northrope (1853-1929), born at Harston, Cambridgeshire, England. They had three daughters and three sons. Death: 15 April 1932 at Brighton le Sands, Rockdale, Sydney. [Death was registered as Riisfeldt.] Religion: Anglican. 

• Arrived in Sydney aboard the Cambridgeshire in 1875 having spent eight years as a seaman. He was working as a carpenter at Balmain in the 1880s. His older brother, Emil, had preceded him to NSW.
• In the 1891 NSW census he and his family were living at Brookvale, Manly, Sydney. He was living at Fred Street, Leichhardt, Sydney, when he was naturalised in Sydney on 15 June 1898.
• He joined the Australian Socialist League (ASL) in the mid-1890s and was involved in ASL/SLP [Socialist Labor Party] in relatively mundane roles for some twenty-five years. In February 1901 the ASL’s organ, People, praised his “hard and earnest work in the Socialist Movement”. He is referred to in its central branch reports as “doorkeeper” and as a participant in Domain out-door meetings.
• In March 1912 he was nominated for position of trustee of the SLP; in January 1919 he still participated in out-door meetings in the Domain.
• In his later years he was an old age pensioner. Cause of death: coronary thrombosis, cardiac failure and senility.
• His brother Peter Thorwald Emile (Emil) Rüsfeldt (1846-1893) “photographic artist to the Grand Duke of Russia, and to His Majesty Norridan I, King of Cambodia” ran a photographic studio in Sydney in 1878-1893 and may have worked previously in Hong Kong, China.

Sources
R. Sharpe, MA thesis, 2003; Revolutionary Socialist, 14 May 1921.