People Australia

Thomas Gilbert (Tom) Taylor, also known as Taylour (1879-1961) journalist, Socialist, gaoled trade union official and social libertarian

Birth: January 1879 at Portobello, Midlothian, Scotland, son of John Taylor or Taylour (1844- before 1921), born at Shirlestane, Scotland, and Belinda Jane Carter (1845-1880), born possibly at Gurta Valla, County Limerick, Ireland. Marriages: (1) 11 April 1903 at Adelaide, South Australia, to Rosamund Agnes Benham (1874-1923), a medical practitioner and advocate of sex reform. They had two daughters before separating. The marriage ended in divorce in September 1913. (2) 4 April 1921 at Tweed Heads, New South Wales, to Grace Irene Hartwright (1900-1986), a stenographer, born at Sussex, England. Death: 27 February 1961 at Repatriation General Hospital, Greenslopes, Brisbane, Queensland. Religion: cremated with Methodist forms. 

• His parents seem to have married in Victoria in 1868 and had moved about 1878 to Scotland, where his mother died in 1880.
• Reputedly arrived in Australia when aged 2, possibly with a member of his mother’s family. Grew up in Victoria. Worked for a relative as a grocery store hand from age of 13 to 17.
• Moved to Perth, Western Australia, about 1897. Organised the shop and warehouse clerks and hotel employees in Perth and was secretary of the Shop Assistants’ Society in 1900. Led a boycott against ‘sweaters’ and was gaoled over activities. Manager, Perth Free Labor Bureau and organised the distribution of a Labor paper.
• Founding secretary of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) of WA (established in 1901) conducted organising tour of outback WA in 1902.
• Moved to Adelaide, South Australia, where he met and married Rosamund, the daughter of Agnes Benham. Organised a ‘Free Speech Publication’.
• Set off for NSW as an organiser. In 1903 he embarked on a visit to eastern States to lobby on behalf of the SDF for federation of socialist bodies. In August 1904 he was found starving, ill and emaciated at Apollo Bay, Victoria. Assisted the unemployed in Melbourne in May-June 1906 and spoke to crowds on the banks of the Yarra River on Sundays. Was described as a journalist.
• Organised a meeting in Melbourne to launch a campaign for Free Speech which became the Free Speech Social Liberty League in May 1906. Presented a lecture on ‘Freedom in Sex Relations’ and in June 1906 distributed leaflets on ‘Free Speech’ and the ‘Sense of Sex’ for which he and two companions were arrested and sentenced to two months imprisonment with hard labour. Whilst on bail he continued his Sunday lectures. The conviction was quashed on appeal.
• Threatened with a charge of sedition for asserting the right of the unemployed to secure food even if it involves disregarding property A fund was launched for his defence.
• Gaoled in Melbourne in August 1907 for abusive language, when he was unable to pay his fine — a “tall, well-spoken young man” — he described himself as an orchardist, at South Wandin. Was living in Queensland, in 1912-1913, occupation journalist.
• Gave his occupation as “medical assistant” when he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 10 December 1914 for service in the 2nd Tropical Forces but was discharged when the company disbanded in February 1915. He again enlisted in the AIF on 22 December 1915, served in France with the 8th Machine Gun Company and returned to Australia in December 1917. He was discharged medically unfit, suffering from malaria and neurasthenia on 16 January 1918 at Brisbane.
• Was in Northern New South Wales in 1921. The following year he was at Ravenshoe, Queensland, and was a promoter of a new State for northern Queensland.
• “Gunner Taylor” stood as an independent for the State seat of Chillago in May 1923 against E. G. Theodore. Worked as a journalist in Queensland. In June 1925 he “bobbed up in Melbourne” as general secretary of the Committee for the Propaganda of Australianism, while running a Daylesford paper, The Mountain Megaphone.
• In April 1929 a meeting he organised in Sydney as secretary of the NSW Foundation for the Propagation of Industrial Peace was broken up by Communists who ended the meeting to the strains of the ‘Red Flag’. In electoral rolls in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s he was shown as a journalist living with his second wife in Brisbane.
• Cause of death: hypostatic pneumonia (1 week), cerebral degeneration (1 year) and pressure ulcers (6 months).

Sources
Verity Burgmann, , In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of Labor, 1885-1905, (Sydney, 1985); Recorder, No. 67 December 1973 pp 13-14; Free Speech, 16 June 1906 Vol. 1 No 2 pp 1-4.