People Australia

Agnes Small, 1939

Daily News (Sydney), 30 September 1939, p 2

Agnes Ellen (Topsy) Small, (1905-1996) kitchen hand, trade union official, Communist and nurse

Birth: 15 December 1905 at Broken Hill, New South Wales, daughter of native-born parents Walter Simpson (1874-1951), shearer and wharf labourer, and Alice Amelia, née Cawse (1879-). Marriage: 1927 at Perth, Western Australia to Frederick John Small (1898-1973), a piano maker, born at Willesden, Middlesex, England. They had one daughter and one son. Death: 20 June 1996 at Sydney, NSW. 

• As a baby, moved with her family to Fremantle, Western Australia, where she attended public school. She was influenced by her father's anti-militarism and Industrial Workers of the World sympathies.
• Worked in a music shop in Perth, where she met her future husband. Active among Perth unemployed in 1930s, with Cecilia Shelley and Katharine Susannah Prichard.
• About 1932 moved to Sydney with her husband in search of employment. Joined Movement Against War and Fascism. Was involved in Egon Kisch deportation case.
• Worked as a kitchen and cafe hand. Joined weakened Hotel, Club and Restaurant Employees' Union, helping in union's reactivation. Was elected organiser 1936 and re-elected 1939. That year she was president of the Daily News Women’s Organising Committee.
• Delegate to Labor Council of New South Wales in 1938. In 1939-40 was president of the Council of Action for Equal Pay. Was injured by store detective during waitresses' strike. In 1943 left union job and moved to Katoomba after her husband contracted tuberculosis. Worked at munitions factory; chaired Katoomba sub-branch of Amalgamated Engineering Union. Joined Katoomba branch of the Communist Party of Australia.
• In 1955 trained as a nurse, becoming sister-in-charge of nursery at Blue Mountains Public Hospital. Active in resistance to Vietnam war.
• After her husband's death (1971) she moved to WA for some years, subsequently returning to Sydney. Active in peace and anti-nuclear movements during 1970s and 1980s.
• Her brother, Flying Officer Walter George Simpson (1901-1962), radio sales manager, served in the Royal Australian Air Force Volunteer reserve in World War II from 21 May 1941. He was a prisoner of war of the Japanese, and was demobilised on 25 March 1947.

Sources
Minutes of HC&RE Union, in possession of Vic Workman; Minutes of Labor Council of NSW; information from Topsy Small and union associates; Audrey Johnson, Bread and Roses; a personal history of three militant women and their friends 1902-1988 (Sydney,1990).