People Australia

Frank Worthy, n.d.

Frank Geoffrey Worthy (1873-1961) carpenter, Socialist and trade union official

Birth: 30 May 1873 at Cornhill, London, England son of Francis John Worthy (1822-1879), worker in Hydrographic Department of British government, and Sarah Matilda Wood (1833-1915). Marriage: 1909 at Boulder, Western Australia, to a widow with four young children, Margaret Stewart, née Kerr, late Shingler (1870-1945), born at Creswick, Victoria. They had two sons. Death: 26 October 1961 at Puttenham Prior, Puttenham, Surrey, England; usual address the vicarage, Tongham, Farnham.

• Educated at Olave’s Grammar. After leaving school he was apprenticed in the carpentry trade with Batten & Sons of South London and left after two-and-a-half years.
• Went to Argentina where he worked with J. & J. Walker on construction of sea port in Buenos Aires where he worked for two years. Contracted typhus and was invalided home to England.
• After convalescence he moved to Fremantle, Western Australia, arriving aboard the Wilcannia (possibly in December 1889). His first job in WA was as a purser with the Revenue Department on the government revenue schooner Meda, off the coast of Broome for four months.
• Moved to Sydney and worked as a carpenter. Joined the Socialist Party becoming an associate of Harry Holland, Harry Foran and others (1892-1893). Was unemployed during the depression.
• Returned to WA in 1894 and worked as carpenter in railway carriage shops; then was a 'rolling stone'. After spending two years back in Sydney, NSW working as a 'boss carpenter' for Harrison & Son, he again returned to Western Australia. Went prospecting at Phillips River; then went to Norseman, then to Morgan's district working at his trade; then worked underground.
• Moved to ‘the Birthplace' (Bunbury) and was elected secretary of the Bunbury branch of the Australian Labor Party. Worked on lighthouse construction, then as a wharf labourer. Shifted to Kalgoorlie as a carpenter then to Murchison district working at Lawlers, Black Range, Barambie Ranges, Cue, Magnet, Sir Samuel and Meekatharra.
• Went to Kalgoorlie in 1908 and was elected secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners union in 1913. Auditor of Eastern Goldfields district council of ALP for four years and was secretary in 1920.
• Worthy moved to Victoria about 1923 and was a builder at East Melbourne in 1925. He moved his family to Camberwell where he worked as a surveyor and was for some years municipal building surveyor.
• After the death of his wife, he retired and returned to England. Cause of death: hypostatic pneumonia, cerebral arterial degeneration and arteriosclerosis.
• His son Frank John Kingston Worthy (1910-1965), radio manufacturer, served as a sergeant in the Australian Imperial Force in the Middle East in World War II, then as a member of the Red Cross in New Guinea. 

Sources
Westralian Worker (Perth), 5 August 1921, p 8.