People Australia

Peter Strong (1843-1910) tailor and trade union official 

Birth: 30 June 1843 at Gosforth, Northumberland, England, son of William Robinson Strong (1809-1858) coal miner, and Frances, née Wardale (1806-1857). Marriages: (1) 14 September 1870 at Queen Street Primitive Methodist chapel, Keighley, Yorkshire, England, to Mary Jane Butterfield (1844-1873), worsted drawer. They had one daughter who died in infancy. (2) 1 July 1874 at Jubilee Primitive Methodist Chapel, Durham city, County of Durham, England, to Sarah Gray (1854-1925). They had five daughters and six sons. Death: 4 June 1910 at Sydney, NSW. Religion: Methodist. 

• After the death of his parents Peter lived with his uncle, a tailor, at Whitworth, Durham, England. In the 1861 census he was described as tailor’s apprentice. By 1870 he was a tailor at Bradford and in 1875 was a tailor residing at Tudhoe Colliery, near Durham.
• Arrived in Sydney aboard the Peterborough as an assisted immigrant with his wife and two children on 26 August 1880.
• Worked as a tailor in Sydney and lived at Glebe.
• Joined the Amalgamated Journeymen Tailors Association of NSW (later Federated Clothing Trades Union) and became a trustee. In 1885 was elected president of the union and delegate to the Trades and Labor Council.
• Strong was a prominent figure in his union for some twenty years and served several terms as president or vice-president. In 1891 he was active in the union during the tailors’ strike and in 1896 was a member of the committee which reorganised the body after a down-turn.
• He was instrumental in the formation in 1889 of the short-lived Tailoresses’ Union, of which he was president, and in the establishment in November 1902 of the State Clothing Factory.
• Elected a trustee of the Journeymen Tailors’ Union in January 1908, at the Trades Hall in September that year he was tendered a benefit concert and social as he had “become almost blind”.
• He collapsed and died on a tram car in King Street, Newtown, Sydney. Cause of death: angina pectoris.

Sources
Merrifield Card Index, State Library of Victoria; Co-operator, 7 October 1912, p 15, ; evidence from Royal Commission on Strikes, 1891.