People Australia

Stanley, Benjamin Howard (1836-1916?) shearer, clerk, trade union official, malefactor and newsagent

Birth: 1836 in London, England, son of James Stanley, naval officer. Unmarried. Death: 1 December 1916 at Rookwood Asylum, Lidcombe, Sydney. Religion: Anglican. 

• Arrived in New South Wales aboard the Monarch of the Seas in 1860. Apparently was in the Bourke district from about 1870.
• Worked as a shearer. Secretary of short-lived shearers' union at Clermont, Queensland, early 1885. Attended Shearers’ Union of Australasia conference at Ballarat in January 1887.
• In 1887 was elected founding chairman of Bourke branch of Amalgamated Shearers' Union. Was branch secretary from 1888. Led branch during 1891 'freedom of contract' dispute, but dispute in branch led to his downfall and in August 1891 he was suspended and later dismissed.
• Was a member of the local Labor electoral league and was spoken of as a possible Labor candidate for the seat of Cobar in 1891 which was won by his colleague and friend Hugh Langwell.
• Arrested in 1892 and charged with theft and receiving a stolen cheque, he was tried at Bathurst and acquitted of theft but found guilty of receiving stolen property. He was sentenced on 17 May to two years and six months imprisonment with hard labour, which he served in Bathurst Gaol.
• Discharged from prison in June 1894, he settled at Mount Drysdale, in the Cobar region, where he ran a newsagency, was official pound-keeper, and was appointed trustee of the local recreation reserve in January 1906.
• He was probably the Benjamin Howard Stanley, store keeper, who died at Rookwood Asylum of senile decay.

Sources
John Merritt, The Making of the AWU (Melbourne, 1986).