People Australia

Patrick Joseph (Joe) Walters, né Waltisbuhl (1897-1958) bootmaker, trade union official and mayor

Birth: 16 April 1897 at Brisbane, Queensland, and registered as Patrick Joseph Waltisbuhl, eldest child of native-born parents Anthony (Anton) Waltisbuhl (1876-1960), a bootmaker, and Rose Madeline, née McCrystal (1882-1956). Marriage: 23 March 1917 at the Registrar’s Office, Newtown, New South Wales, as Patrick Joseph Waltisbuhl, to Elvie Rita Jones (1899-1977), born at Bega, NSW. They had two daughters and one son. Death: 13 July 1958 in his usual residence at Highgate Street, Bexley, Sydney, registered as Patrick Joseph Walters. Religion: Anglican. 

• His father served in the third Queensland Contingent in the Boer War and was mentioned in dispatches. His paternal grandfather Anton Waltisbuhl (1844-1927), born in Kohlholz, Switzerland, had migrated to Queensland in 1871.
• Joe had moved to Moore Park, Sydney, New South Wales, with his parents and younger brothers by 1912 — when he and his brothers suffered ptomaine poisoning from eating tinned apples, from which one of them, 5-year-old Anthony Frederick (Freddie), died.
• The family adopted the name Walters about 1919 or 1920. [His sister Josephine’s birth was registered under Waltisbuhl in May 1917 and her death was registered under Walters in September 1919.] Joe’s three children, born between 1917 and 1920 were registered as Waltisbuhl but he was using the surname Walters, as well, according to electoral rolls from 1930.
• Joe joined the Boot Trade Employees’ Federation (BTEF) in 1916. In 1935 he was president of the union’s New South Wales branch; he was delegate to the federal council in 1943.
• Elected assistant secretary of the New South Wales branch of the BTEF in January 1944, he was secretary from 1947 to 1958. In 1952 he was appointed senior vice president and in 1955 federal treasurer.
• Active in the Australian Labor Party, he was an alderman on the Newtown Council from December 1941 to December 1944 and was mayor of Newtown in 1943-1944.
• His son Herbert Joseph Walters, né Waltisbuhl (1920-2002), served in New Guinea with the Australian Imperial Force in World War II.
• Cause of death: carcinomatous metastases (both lungs), hypernephroma tumour of right kidney (6 months) and terminal broncho pneumonia.

Sources
Unity, 15 February 1944, 15 August 1958.