People Australia

Thomas White, c.1910

Worker (Wagga, NSW), 9 January 1913, p 17

Thomas (Tommy) White (1857-1913) shearer and trade union official

Birth: 1857 at North Melbourne, Victoria, son of Gavin White (1818-1884), stone mason and pioneer trades unionist, born at Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, and his first wife Rebecca, née Rolls (1847-1869), born in London, England. Unmarried: in his last years lived with native-born Mary Elizabeth Rickard, née Mathews, known as White (1864-1938), the wife of Thomas Kevern Rickard (1854-1917), a book-keeper and miner, by whom she had borne eight children. Death: 2 January 1913 at Hawley Bridge, near Adelaide, South Australia; usual residence Surry Hills, Sydney. Religion: Presbyterian. 

• Worked as a shearer in Queensland. Member of the first branch of the Shearers’ Union in Bourke. Shearing shed representative. Organiser and secretary of the Bourke branch of the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU). Active during the A.S.N. Co's 1878 strike.
• Driven by employer action from NSW to Western Australia.
• Australian Labor Party candidate for federal seat of Wannon, Victoria, in December 1903 and was defeated by only a few votes.
• Elected general secretary of the AWU in Sydney in 1911 in succession to Donald Macdonell. On 1 July 1912 he resigned as secretary, due to ill-health, and was succeeded by Edward Grayndler, to whom White became assistant secretary.
• He represented the AWU at the Pastoralists’ Union conference in Western Australia in December 1912 and died on a train on his return trip to Sydney.
• Cause of death: heart failure.
• A memorial to him erected at Waverley cemetery, where he was buried, was unveiled in February 1916.

Sources
Worker, 9 January 1913, p 17, 16 January 1913, p 13, 29 January 1913, p 2; Australian Worker, 10 February 1916, p 17.