Louisa and Henry Lawson chronology 1890-1894

Copyright © Pip Wilson, 2007

Blue denotes Henry's addresses on mail (from Roderick, 1970) or from other sources.
Red denotes uncertainty, eg date or fact.  Pink denotes items placed for chronological context, etc.

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Lawsons chronology up to 1889 and Henry Lawson news

Lawsons chronology 1890-1894  Lawson chronology 1895-1899

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1890

1890 in literature

January-April: Sydney
May-September: Albany, WA
October-December: Sydney

University of Tasmania founded.

Heidelberg School of painters attained success.

The first Australian coin-operated public phones?   Source

"Establishment of Brisbane Worker. ASU conference: decision to enforce closed shop/blockade; affiliation with Trades Halls in New South Wales and Victoria. QSU affiliates with Australian Labour Federation. Maritime Strike (August-November)."   Source

"In the 1890s a meeting was held in Stratten's Hall, Bondi Junction to agitate the government for an extension of the tramway to Bondi Beach. Eventually a line to the Beach was installed including the famous loop at the Beach which gave rise to the expression "shoot through like a Bondi Tram"."   Source  [Electric tram to Bondi, 1894] "The Waverley [tram] Line was extended to Bondi Junction in 1884 and to Bondi Aquarium in 1887. The first cross-country (ie neither terminus was in the city) service opened in 1887, connecting the Coogee Line at Randwick to the Waverley Line at Waverley, with services from Randwick to Bondi Junction. This line was, from 1890 to 1892, the first experimental electrified line in Sydney. It reverted to steam operation when the electrical equipment was transferred to the North Shore."   Source

According to JA Andrews, writing in Tocsin, May 31, 1900, this year was the beginning of a period in which revolution in Australia was narrowly averted.

William Lane in the Boomerang attacked the Womanhood Suffrage League.

Robert Louis Stevenson in Sydney; stayed at Richmond Terrace in the Sydney Domain. Stevenson also stayed at the old Oxford Hotel, now either the Supreme Court building or more likely it was opposite St James Church, in King St.   Stevenson, Australia and Dr Hyde

"In the 1890s a tram went along William Street to Kings Cross. The steam tram from Leichhardt was a double-decker, which came along Broadway, and crossed Belmore Park, then more extensive than it is now. This tram swung into Elizabeth Street, terminating at Market Street, which ran along the side of the old George Street markets. There were no trams in Castlereagh or Pitt Streets ..."   Ollif

"By 1890, pastoral unionism was losing momentum and the bosses were becoming more aggressive. Union strength was also under threat from new shearing machines that made it easier to replace skilled shearers with novices. A concerned ASU leadership began looking to the maritime unions for assistance, as did the Queensland Shearers’ Union, an independent body competing with the ASU. During a conflict over the closed shop at Jondaryan station on the Darling Downs, the Queenslanders explored the possibility of a port blockade to stop the transport of non-union wool They also looked to the Australian Labor Federation (a force in Queensland, though virtually non-existent elsewhere) to organise solidarity.
  "The ASU likewise allied itself with the New South Wales maritime unions, ensuring that the Sydney Trades and Labor Council also fell into line, although some conservative elements would have preferred not to back the shearers. An ASU manifesto called on unionists ‘to draw such a cordon around the Australian continent as will effectively prevent a bale of wool leaving unless shorn by union shearers.’ (Quoted in Merritt: 161). Ultimately, however, these initiatives were swallowed up in the great 1891 strikes."   Source

"In 1890 the TLC established a general Organising committee, which moved to organise laundresses and to create a Female Employees’ Society. The laundresses struck in September, 1891 over the sacking of a fellow worker. During the dispute Miss Creo Stanley became the first female delegate to the TLC."   Source   [See July 20, 1891 on Creo Stanley]

"When the bicycling craze hit Australia it hit in a big way. During the 1890s cycle races were one of the hottest forms of entertainment on offer drawing crowds of many thousands ... Women embraced cycling as another area in which they could prove their equality with men. Denied the vote and the right to property they could at least demand the right to pedal about as they pleased. This right was challenged by conservative men in the medical industry as well as by conservative larrikins in the street. The pages of The Champion saw a debate break out in 1890 between those who saw cycling as "injurious to the fragile female form" and those who scoffed at such wacky medical ideas." Source, with letter

Henry's brother Peter (aka Birdie or Bert Lawson) moved to Perth and worked as a clerk, perhaps touring the country with Bland Holt, theatre identity.

Believing as he did that Australian colonial capitalism was moving towards crisis, Lane moved the General Council of the ALF to propose: "the nationalisation of all sources of wealth and all the means of producing and exchanging wealth".

Henry Lawson wrote 'The Third Murder', which was Poe-like.

William Lane sold his share in the Boomerang (barrister JG Drake was another shareholder) to Gresley Lukin, taking on the editorship of the Worker, the first union-supported co-operative newspaper in Australia, becoming possibly the most influential labour writer in Australia.

Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) became active for female suffrage. It had 300 members.

January: Mary Cameron, 24, began teaching at Neutral Bay Public School at her previous (Silverton School) salary of 114 pounds. She lived with her mother Mary Ann Cameron at a boarding house, run by Kate Dunn, Kieta House, 5 Bligh Street. At Kieta House she met George Black, sub-editor of the Bulletin in 1889, editor of Australian Workman c. 1892 (Black followed Brady so it must have been 1892). Through Black she met Louisa Lawson (she and Mary Ann became friends in 1889; in fact, Mary Ann called Louisa Lawson "the one perfect woman in the world"), and it was at this address that she met Henry Lawson. Louisa Lawson started to complain that Henry Lawson was spending too much time at 5 Bligh St; Mary says he came round almost every night. Later Mary said that Henry Lawson fell in love with her at first sight. As Bligh St house had no separate sitting room, they walked, her taking his arm as was customary. He took her to Lower George St and The Rocks where she had a "social education" as she was more middle class. She later wrote, he took her to see "the low wage workers, the Chinamen working at treadle-saws in underground cellars lit only by a grating in the street, the huddled houses in the old Argyle Cut".
  Later this year, Mary and her mother moved to 113 Phillip St, Mrs Solomon's boarding house. She described the street as having an oak tree that went into her balcony; a dirt footpath. "On the balcony opposite, ladies in full skirts sat under wide umbrellas in the summer and had afternoon tea."

January: Collapse of the Volunteer Artillery Hotel, Pitt St, Sydney. Two killed.   Photo

January 1: Sydney: the St Leonards to Hornsby railway line was opened, with stations Wahroonga, Eastern Road, Pymble, Gordon, Lindfield, Roseville and Chatswood. Four services each way on weekdays, no train on Sunday.

January 25: Pioneer woman Journalist Nellie Bly finished her round-the-world journey in 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes (commenced November 14, 1889).

February 6: In Melbourne, a Federation Conference of colonial delegates began their formulation of the Australian Constitution. A banquet was held for those meeting in the Queen's Hall of the Victorian Parliament.

February 7: Dr Constance Stone was registered as a medical practitioner in Melbourne, first woman in Australia.

February 25: In the foyer of the Union Club, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Father Damien: An Open Letter to the Reverend Dr. Hyde of Honolulu. He wrote it in defence of Belgian missionary Father Damien (Damien De Veuster) of Molokai Hawaii, whom Dr Charles M Hyde, a former missionary to Molokai, had accused of contracting leprosy from having sexual relations with women at the leper colony he worked in. Stevenson also stayed in Sydney at the Oxford Hotel, now the Supreme Court building, and at Richmond Terrace in the Sydney Domain (while on the seas his address was care of R. Towns & Co, Sydney). Around this time, he also wrote about the poverty he witnessed in the Domain. Stevenson arrived in Sydney in February on the German steamship Lubeck but suffered a relapse of his serious ill health in Sydney ("being a blooming prisoner here in the club, and indeed in my bedroom" he wrote in a letter to Charles Baxter*), and, since it seemed that only in the warmer climes of the South Pacific did he ever have respite from his illness, he and his wife Fanny set sail from Sydney on April 10, on board the Janet Nicoll ("had a cruel rough passage to Auckland, for the JANET is the worst roller I was ever aboard of. I was confined to my cabin, ports closed, self shied out of the berth, stomach [pampered till the day I left on a diet of perpetual egg-nogg] revolted at ship's food and ship eating, in a frowsy bunk, clinging with one hand to the plate, with the other to the glass, and using the knife and fork [except at intervals] with the eyelid," he wrote to Sidney Colvin), visiting dozens of islands and returning to Sydney in August, by which time the writer's health had returned. They stayed until September; during this short visit he wrote to Henry James from the Union Club, "Kipling** is too clever to live ... I must tell you plainly – I can't tell Colvin – I do not think I shall come to England more than once, and then it'll be to die. Health I enjoy in the tropics; even here, which they call sub- or semi-tropical, I come only to catch cold. I have not been out since my arrival; live here in a nice bedroom by the fireside, and read books and letters from Henry James, and send out to get his TRAGIC MUSE, only to be told they can't be had as yet in Sydney, and have altogether a placid time. But I can't go out! The thermometer was nearly down to 50 degrees the other day – no temperature for me, Mr. James: how should I do in England? ... The sea, islands, the islanders, the island life and climate, make and keep me truly happier. These last two years I have been much at sea, and I have NEVER WEARIED". From the Union Club in September he wrote to Mrs Charles Fairchild, "You are quite right; our civilisation is a hollow fraud, all the fun of life is lost by it; all it gains is that a larger number of persons can continue to be contemporaneously unhappy on the surface of the globe." On August 19 from the Union Club, Stevenson wrote to Marcel Schwob: "I am just now overloaded with work. I have two huge novels on hand - THE WRECKER and the PEARL FISHER, in collaboration with my stepson: the latter, the PEARL FISHER, I think highly of, for a black, ugly, trampling, violent story, full of strange scenes and striking characters. And then I am about waist-deep in my big book on the South Seas: THE big book on the South Seas it ought to be, and shall. And besides, I have some verses in the press, which, however, I hesitate to publish. For I am no judge of my own verse; self-deception is there so facile. All this and the cares of an impending settlement in Samoa keep me very busy, and a cold (as usual) keeps me in bed."

* "This visit to Sydney has smashed me handsomely; and yet I made myself a prisoner here in the club upon my first arrival. This is not encouraging for further ventures; Sydney winter – or, I might almost say, Sydney spring, for I came when the worst was over – is so small an affair, comparable to our June depression at home in Scotland." Why he wrote this when he arrived in February, the last month of Summer, 1890, is unknown to your almanackist.

** Sydney was getting some interesting visitors in the 1890s. Among these, Rudyard Kipling was in Sydney in mid-November, 1891, in the same week as Henry Morton Stanley. The American economist Henry George was in Sydney in May, 1890 between Stevenson's visits.

Letters before, during and after Sydney    More    RL Stevenson at Project Gutenberg

February 28: The British-India steamer RMS Quetta sank north of Cape York (British India Company; Captain Alfred Sanders) with the loss of 160 lives, 122 survivors. Henry Lawson wrote 'Stand by the Engines' about it.

March: Mary Cameron's mother went to Junee for six weeks. (She was changing her social column from Town and Country Journal to Daily Telegraph at this time). Mary Cameron went to board at 138 Phillip St with the Lawsons.

March 4: Charles Lawson was sentenced at Forbes to 3 years hard labour for larceny and receiving.

March 4: The longest bridge in Britain, the Forth Bridge (1,710 ft) in Scotland was opened.

April 11: RL Stevenson left Sydney, and had to be stretchered onto the Janet Nicoll.

April 26: Henry Lawson and Peter Jr (17) set sail for Albany, Western Australia on the Australien; Henry sold a couple of inconsequential items to the Freeman's Journal before leaving, which helped pay his fare. They disembarked May 5 (May 3: Note in Bulletin that "The talented Henry Lawson has left for Western Australia"). Immediately ("in the first hour") got work as housepainters because of boom. No record from them of why they went to Albany, WA. Bertha Lawson and Mary Gilmore say that Louisa Lawson packed Henry Lawson off to separate him from Gilmore (then Cameron), to whom he had proposed. Bertram Stevens concurs with this view. (Bertha Lawson refers to but does not name the woman.) Mary Cameron/Gilmore, after Henry's death, claimed that Gertrude had told her that Louisa Lawson intercepted Henry's letters to Mary. Gertrude had said to Mary, "There was a letter for you. It was in Henry's writing." To this, Louisa Lawson had interjected, "There was no letter", and sent Gertrude to her room. Ollif's (Ollif, Lorna, Louisa Lawson: Henry Lawson's Crusading Mother, Rigby, Sydney, 1978) interpretation differs from Mary's, in that Ollif believes Louisa Lawson merely thought Gertrude was being precocious. Hmmm.  She was almost certainly helping him with prosody around now. Mary wrote in 1924 that Henry Lawson asked her to marry him the day before he was to sail to Western Australia, suggesting a registry office. Mary didn't feel ready, and thought him immature, and she did not find him attractive; she thought he looked weak and effeminate, too young. Perhaps there was a scandal; Peter Lawson said that Louisa Lawson got Henry Lawson out of an ugly situation. At the time, Mary was staying with Louisa at 26 Jamieson St, and Louisa Lawson intercepted letters; Henry Lawson, getting no replies, broke it off before sailing. When Mary's mother returned to take her Daily Telegraph position, Mary moved back in with her.

May 22: HL's 'Who's Dot Pulleteen' published in the Albany Observer, editor Lancelot Lindley-Cowan, an American. Two days later, 'Straight Talk' appeared. He wrote as though he had lived there more than a few weeks: "our park-like streets". He wrote more articles for this paper, at a penny a line. See Roderick, 1991, pp 61-62.

May 29: Dr John McLeod was found guilty of bigamy, in Sydney.

June 25: Canon Saumarez Smith was consecrated C of E Bishop of Sydney and Primate of Australia, at St Paul's in London.

July 5: Albany Observer published HL's woolly-headed 'The New Religion': "It is true that unions are formed for protection against unprincipled labour as well as unprincipled capital ... Every workman should bear in mind that self-denial in the individual is quite as essential to social reformation and it is to individual reformation" ... went on with racist cant, and said to keep female labour "within proper limits".

At Kendennup, WA, he fell in with a French-speaking Aboriginal (King Billy) who had worked on a French whaler.

August: RL Stevenson had a short stay in Sydney, departure date unknown. Stayed at the Union Club.

August 5: Sir John Hall gave a speech in parliament on women's suffrage.

August 9: Saturday, the first recital of the Sydney Town Hall organ, the largest organ in the world; the City Organist from Liverpool, England WT Best performed for 4,000 guests. "It was reported that some of them kept up a discourse throughout much of the concert, while at times random whistling was even heard. Still, the concert was a resounding success ... The instrument is of international significance and is generally considered to be the finest nineteenth century Romantic concert organ in the world."   Source   Picture   Town Hall chronology

Mid-August: Two weeks before Maritime Strike, William Nicholas Willis launched Truth, with Adolphus George Taylor (nicknamed 'Giraffe', 'Mudgee' or 'the Mudgee Camel') and William Patrick Crick. John Norton (pictured at left) had a gossip column in first issue. By end of September he was listed as Associate Editor.

Left: John Napoleon Norton, inebriate editor of Truth and wild man of Sydney. 
Truth published a number of Henry Lawson's works.

August 15: Cardinal Moran opened St Vincent's Hospice, Sydney.

August 16: The Bulletin warned labor against a prolonged strike. By the end of the month the maritime strike had spread to almost all trade unionists in Australia (except WA) and New Zealand. It collapsed within two months for lack of funds.

August 17: By this date, Mary Cameron and her mother had moved from 113 Phillip St to Mrs Cruickshank's boarding house at 187 Macquarie St.

August 20: Thousands of wharf labourers walked off the job in Sydney, refusing to load wool shorn by non-union labbor. Gangs of strikers guarded the docks against blacklegs. The newly formed Labour Defence Committee released a statement.

August 22: A case of leprosy was reported in Balmain.

August 30: Australia's Great Maritime Strike: In Melbourne, one thousand military volunteers were addressed by Colonel Tom Price: "You will each be supplied with forty rounds of ammunition and leaden bullets and if the order is given to fire, don't let me see one rifle pointed up in the air. Fire low and lay them out." In 1930 Mary Gilmore wrote that Henry Lawson called on her in a high state of excitement: "All my life I shall hear his voice, 'They have served out ball cartridge and are going to fire on my countrymen!' I think he had run all the way into town to me from the mass meeting ..." (Lawson, Bertha Jr, and Brereton, John LeGay, Henry Lawson by His Mates, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1931). (Gilmore was mixed up. Henry Lawson was in Albany, WA.) That night, machine gun nests were mounted behind Parliament House. Regardless of the danger, 60,000 protesters attended the meeting the next day.   Maritime Strike 1890

In Melbourne, Chief Justice Higinbotham supported the strike from his own pocket. In Sydney, Cardinal Moran was a strong supporter.

September 19: " ... in the climax of the maritime strike. Industrial unrest in the pastoral industry had prompted Sydney wharf labourers to refuse to handle wool shorn by non-unionists. The wool owners, tired of a dispute that had dragged on two months, led a procession of waggons loaded with bales of fleece to the Circular Quay wharfs, where mounted police charged an angry crowd of strikers, scattering them into the city streets. The strike was effectively broken, although McMillan, deputising for a convalescent Parkes, feared continuing 'disorder and anarchy'. To a rattled delegation from the stock exchange he rashly declared that the Government would 'take such steps to secure the liberty of the subjects of this country, that will be absolutely successful'. McMillan failed to specify — and probably did not know — what these 'steps' might involve, allowing speculation to run unchecked. Parkes quickly overruled him: 'the Government cannot defend the interests of one class to the neglect of another'. Presented with public humiliation in the press McMillan promptly offered his resignation, although Parkes soon talked him around.   ^"McMillan's intemperate remarks isolated him as a ritual villain in public discourse. A week after the Quay confrontation, the Bulletin repeated a rumour circulating around Sydney which became settled fact amongst Sydney's radicals. 'When Treasurer McMillan intimated to the Sydney Exchange deputation that his Government was determined to take drastic measures with regard to all strike disturbances, the wink passed around that there was an arrangement for the landing of blue-jackets from the British war-ships in harbour'. The Bulletin also claimed that recently erected barricades at the Quay were to facilitate their landing. Such a 'foreign invasion' would be an invitation to begin sewing 'the Australian Republican flag'.   ^"Thereafter McMillan's name was rarely mentioned in the labour press without the formula being repeated."   Source

Parkes was angry that his Treasurer W McMillan read the Riot Act at Circular Quay.

Mid-September: William Crick wrote in Truth:

CRICK ON PARKES
"Definition of a Scoundrel"
"Rifled Pursers and Ruined Reputations"
"Open and Underground Adultery"
"Cold-blooded Human Shark"
"Seventy Years of Sin"
"Attributes of Snakes and Monkeys"
"Crick Gets Show of Hands"

September 22: First edition of the Australian Workman, official organ of the TLC in Sydney. The first editor was Rev. Dr (Theodore) Oswald Keating, MA, DD, LLD had just stepped off a clipper ship in July and been published in Truth's earliest numbers. The proprietors of the Australian Workman were impressed with him and under the circumstances, pleased to have a clergyman's name on the masthead. By the end of October, he was suing the newspaper for 5 pounds for wrongful dismissal. Dr Keating was in fact Joseph James Crouch, a forger and conman who had impersonated clergy of various denominations for thirty years, been imprisoned a number of times, and robbed and abandoned a widow he had married for money in England. In the US in 1881 he had conned many, including Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, who lent him money as well as his pulpit. He could speak fluently in several languages, including Hebrew. He also plied his craft in Canada, and in Dublin, Ireland he had been known as a brilliant Protestant preacher. In Kilmainham Gaol, he was the "guest" of the Governor, who had had him for dinner as a guest of honour just a fortnight before.
  Australian Workman was first published from strike headquarters at the Australian Coffee Palace, Castlereagh St, it was pretty much controlled by the ASL until 1894. It ended in 1897. The early editions had ads like:

STRIKERS!!! The Place for Good Liquors is the Cardigan, Oxford Street. Support Your Friend.
UNION FOWLS lay more EGGS than any blackleg fowls. Brown Leghorns from Prize Stick, 12/6 settings. Eight guaranteed to hatch.

September 29: Queensland introduced triennial parliaments.

September 30: Henry Lawson set sail for Sydney on the MM steamer Salazie. He was depressed; he knew nothing of the industrial turmoil that was going on in Melbourne and Sydney during his absence. 

October: Knights of Labor was established in Sydney.

October 2: Worst fire ever in Australia burnt out the whole block of Sydney bounded by Pitt and Castlereagh Streets between Hosking and Martin Place. It began in the premises of Gibbs, Shallard and Co., Printers (Pitt St). Businesses destroyed: Southern Club, Athenaeum Club, Lark and Sons warehouses, Richardson and Wrench, City Bank, Jones and Lawson furniture. Pickpockets worked the crowds.

October 9: By now the maritime strife had subsided. Henry Lawson was at Aunt Emma's place. Emma wrote that he was poor and down at heel, depressed. He sold to the Bulletin 'The Fire at Ross's Farm' which he'd written on the boat, and returned to Emma's drunk. 

He was now unemployed, dossing in "a third-rate hash house" (HL) or on Aunt Emma's veranda, trying to live by the pen, and sold some pieces to Freeman's Journal, Town and Country Journal and Norton's Truth. Henry Lawson getting more political. Norton favoured formation of a Labor party, Archibald opposed it vehemently as it would dilute the movement. Henry Lawson was with Norton.

October 21: Constitution Act 1890 (UK) Western Australia's Constitution became law, proclaimed today.

October 25: Archibald in Bulletin derided Parkes's plan to not give "one person one vote" same to women as men.

October 31: Lord Carrington opened the School of Telegraphy in Sydney.

November: 'Oswald Keating' had been trying for weeks to collect monies owed to him by Truth for his novel. After having been found out, Crouch, still calling himself Rev. Dr Keating, went back to the owners of Truth, the politicians William Nicholas Willis and Adolphus George Taylor, and demanded monies (the residue of 50 pounds) they had promised him for a novel and some articles they had published. They refused, and the parties disputed for several weeks. One day in November, Crouch went to Taylor's Woollahra home to carry on the battle, but Taylor was not in, so Crouch was invited in by the servant, 12-year-old Mary Ann Brown, whom Crouch seduced on Taylor's drawing-room sofa. The matter ended up in court with John Norton giving information but not sworn evidence against Crouch, who defended himself and got five years, but did not live to serve out his sentence. He was found dead the next day in his Darlinghurst Gaol cell, possibly by a poisoned pill brought in at his request by his wife Polly. Taylor and Willis came out badly too, with the judge, Mr Justice William Windeyer roundly criticising them for hushing up the seduction of the girl for a long period of time, which they did because they were hoping Crouch would simply leave town and thus a scandal for them would be avoided.

November: Carbine won the Melbourne Cup setting a weight carrying record of 10st 5lbs (66kg) in beating a field of 39 starters and setting a new race record time.

November 9: First electric trams in Sydney, on the Bondi Junction-Waverley route.

November 11: Australian Socialist League commemorated the Chicago Anarchists. there was a solemn reading of 'On revolution', which had been recited by one of the martyrs before sentencing. The ASL also annually commemorated May Day from 1892, and the suppression of the Paris Commune (March).

November 13: Paddy Crick was expelled from Parliament (and in 1906 he resigned to avoid expulsion over a land swindle).

The Great Maritime Strike was defeated when the Marine Officers returned to work on the employers terms, with Illawarra coal miners being the last workers to return to work in January 1891.

November 21: Collision on Sydney Harbour between the steamer Alert and a Neutral Bay ferry.

November 22: Sydney: NSW Art Gallery burgled, many coins stolen.

November 28: Tasmania introduced payment for members of parliament.

Summer 1890-91: Henry Lawson found work painting in Sydney and Mt Victoria.

December: The blue-speckle cattle dog (blue heeler) established as a pure breed: bred by Jack and Harry Bagust of Sydney.

December 21: ASL hired the Royal Standard Theatre for a free Sunday-night concert. After this, Henry Parkes refused permits for Sunday night meetings. His sabbatarian explanations were disingenuous, as he was simultaneously enforcing Sunday employment on public works, against the wishes of the Amalgamated Navvies and General Labourer's Union. Thus the ASL had to go back to Leigh House for Sunday night meetings, which was crammed. Men would recite poetry, women sing and play piano, violin, etc, before the lectures. Billy Hughes regularly attended/performed from late-1892 until 1898 when he resigned.

December 22: The Garrick Theatre opened, Sydney.

December 28: Two hundred houses were damaged at Deniliquin (Riverina) by a severe storm, accompanied by a tornado.

December 29: USA: Wounded Knee Massacre of Oglala Sioux, Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Three hundred mostly unarmed Indians were killed when the 7^th United States Cavalry (Custer's old command) discharged artillery amidst women, children and fleeing men. Twenty-nine soldiers died in this final major military battle in genocide against Native Americans. Eighteen soldiers received Congressional Medals of Honor for their 'bravery'.

December 30: WA's first parliament sworn in by Governor Sir William Robinson. First Premier John Forrest.

End of 1890: JA Andrews: "Around the end of 1890 [Jack Andrews] tramped overland to Sydney, probably leaving a trail of anarchist symbols and graffiti. He soon appeared at the Sydney ASL rooms and met up with German-born anarchist Joseph Schellenberg at whose farm he then lived. Schellenberg had been an early member of the ASL."   Source  "[Sam] Rosa arrived from Melbourne at about the same time but by train. It is Rosa, however, who quickly makes a name for himself as the ASL's 'foremost advocate of revolutionary socialism'."   Source

Henry Lawson poems in 1890

Middleton's Rouseabout
Skeleton Flat
To a Pair of Blucher Boots
A Word to Texas Jack
The Glass on the Bar
To "Doc" Wylie
Over the Ranges and Into the West
The Two Samaritans and the Tramp
The Squatter, Three Cornstalks, and the Well
The Song of Old Joe Swallow
The Black Tracker
Ireland Shall Rebel
Stand by the Engines
The Statue of Our Queen
John Cornstalk
Who's Dot Pulleteen?
"On the Summit of Mount Clarence"
An Australian Advertisement
"Possum"
The Australian Marseillaise
The Pavement Stones
The Fight at Eureka Stockade
Cherry-Tree Inn
The Fire at Ross's Farm
When the Children Come Home
Trouble on the Selection
He Mourned His Master
Lily
Sweethearts Wait on Every Shore
The Water Lily

1891

1891 in literature

Jan-March: Sydney
March-September: Brisbane
October-December: Sydney

Famine in Russia.

The labor movement officially spelt it thus from 1891.

First Federal Convention.

Justice Mr William Windeyer knighted.

1891 - 94 Sir William Patrick Manning (1845-1915) was Mayor of Sydney (Lord Mayors after 1902: list).

"Sir William Manning, an accountant and financial agent, was Mayor of Sydney from 1891 to 1894, and represented South Sydney for a period in the legislative assembly. He was knighted in 1894."   Source (not same as Sir William Montagu Manning, 1811-1895)

1891 - 93: Governor of NSW, Victor Albert George Child-Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey (1845 - 1915).

"ASU organises General Labourers Union February on behalf of shed-hands; QSU and Queensland Workers Union (shed-hands) form AWUQ. Queensland pastoral strike. July: ASU Executive Council concedes freedom of contract. Wagga Branch publishes The Hummer."   Source

Population of Sydney 383,333.

Jessie Ackermann organised colonial branches of the international Woman's Christian Temperance Union, established in Australia since 1882, into a national organisation, lobbying for the suffrage, 'the symbol of freedom'.

First discovery of gold at Nannine in the Murchison district (WA).

NSW Royal Commission on Strikes. WG Higgs, editor of the Australian Workman, named Das Kapital as 'the socialist's Bible'. He also said that if employers continued to enforce freedom of contract, "they will be met with physical force, they will be confronted with revolution". WG Spence, a Christian preacher, a member of the Creswick militia, prominent in the temperance movement, leader of the Amalgamated Miners Association (AMA) and a justice of the peace, informed the Commission that "I do not believe in strikes at all". He thought unionists ‘must demand the respect of capitalists to such an extent that the latter would ultimately come to the former and say, "We will go mates on this or that concern". Spence along with David Temple set up a shearers’ union at Ballarat in Victoria.

"In the 1891 election, 35 members of the newly formed Labor Electoral League entered Parliament although they split almost immediately over the protection-free trade issue. Their numbers were significant but not sufficient for Labor to form a government until 1910."   Source

By this year, Louisa Lawson had discarded the pen-name Dora Falconer.

In Queensland, the Women's Union was established by May Jordan, Emma Miller et al.

Louisa Lawson took Gertude (b, 1877), aged about 14, to the School of Arts, Pitt Street, which had a debating club closed to women. She knew the secretary, Mr Haviland, from The Spiritualistic Lyceum. On a Friday night, Louisa Lawson arranged an interview with the president of the Junior Debating Club. She was told she could see him but not speak in the debating hall. The chairman announced the presence of a prominent member of the Womanhood Suffrage League and moved that she be allowed to speak. Till then she had only given three or four well rehearsed lectures (later became a good extemporaneous speaker). She flattered the men, that they would not be unjust to women, and they applauded, calling for her membership. This was castigated by the Senior Debating Club on the following Monday. The senior and junior clubs split; the latter engaged Dawn press for any of its printing, despite threats from the NSWTA. On June 23, 1892, Louisa Lawson was offered membership of the Senior Debating Club.

Date? The old George Street market was demolished and the Queen Victoria 'Market' Building begun (says one source; another says the QVB construction began in 1893).  (Opened July 21, 1898.)

Publication of 'Otherside'; seems to be anti-utopian (?): "And we’d trample one another on the way to Otherside/For I find among my brothers less Humanity than Pride." A response to New Australia (Roderick, 1991). Nor did he have faith in parliament.

Louisa Lawson and School of Arts Committee:

"In 1891 [Louisa Lawson] joined the Womanhood Suffrage League, allowing the League to use the Dawn office and print its literature there free of charge. She was a member of the League's deputation to NSW premier George Dibbs in 1892. In a Dawn editorial of October 1890 she wrote 'Men govern the world and the schemes upon which all our institutions are founded show men's thoughts only'. Her journalistic and political efforts did much to make the vote for women a precondition for a federated Australia."   Source

"By the late 1880s, Louisa Lawson, a leading Sydney feminist, had become 'a force in the deliberations' of the School of Arts Committee. In 1891, a coalition of feminists, socialists and single taxers mounted a challenge to the institute's conservative leadership, reducing women's fees to half the male rate. Female membership rocketed, from 500 to 2,800 in a six-month period.46 And with that the masculinist culture of reading seemed to crumble. Women, Lawson announced, had broken out of the Ladies Department: long skirts swept the floors of the Reading Room and mounted the rostrum of the Debating Club."   Source

Summer 1890-91: Henry Lawson found work painting in Sydney and Mt Victoria. 

January: "Sir Henry Parkes ... decreed in January 1891 that a special permit from him, the Chief Secretary, was necessary before Sunday-night lectures, a popular radical outing at the time, could be held. A deputation of McNamara, Blackwell, Healy and Higgs to Parkes was unsuccessful but it appears that lectures ultimately continued without permit under the disguise of the regular Sunday-night concerts at Mr. West's Leigh House Academy, a dancehall and theatre above which Castlereagh Street, meeting rooms eventually became known as just Leigh House. Parkes may also have realised that a specific danger represented by the ASL was its potential for coalescing anti-Parliamentary forces into a substantial power base outside the confines of the 'House' and its strictures."   Source: The ASL and the Struggle over Tactics

January: Henry Lawson briefly at Eurunderee (formerly New Pipeclay) where he had a brief love affair with Bridget Lambert. He wryly comments on it in 'The Selector's Daughter'.

January: RL Stevenson came to Sydney to meet his mother who was en route from Edinburgh to Vailima, RLS's home in Samoa. In Sydney, Stevenson fell very ill and was taken straight from his sick bed to the Lubeck where his mother attended him. While in Sydney he is said to have stayed at the old Oxford Hotel in King St opposite St James Church, rooms in Macquarie St and the Australian and Athenaeum Clubs. Departed in March.

January 1: Brisbane: Boomerang editions henceforth under Gresley Lukin's ownership ("... the courageous editor of the Queenslander newspaper, Gresley Lukin, who exposed many massacres [of Aborigines] in his newspaper in the 19th century"   Source). Founded by William Lane three years earlier, but he had to choose between journalism and his beliefs because of advertisers, so he sold it to Lukin in 1890 and in March, 1891 (Wikipedia says May), took a job editing the new labour paper, Queensland Worker at much less income (three pounds a week), throwing himself into politics. Wikipedia says "the tone became increasingly threatening towards the employers, the government, and the British Empire itself". Boomerang ran into trouble and after six months Henry Lawson was let go. He then divided his time between odd jobs, writing and carousing.

January 1: Electric lighting officially installed in Newcastle, NSW.

January 2: Lawrence Hargrave flew in a kite for a period of 14 seconds, for a distance of eight metres.

January 5: The Shearers' Strike began when Logan Downs Shearing Station in Queensland (encouraged by the collapse of the maritime strike) employed non-union men to do the work. After seven months the Shearers' Union money was exhausted and they agreed with pastoralists on a dispute settlement procedure.

"Shearers established a number of camps, the best-known of which was at Barcaldine [a town in central western Queensland], where about one thousand shearers, said to be armed and advocating incendiarism, were camped. They flew the Eureka flag. A number of union leaders were sentenced to terms of imprisonment following their arrests at Barcaldine." ['The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary of Australian History', Jan Bassett, 1993, 1996.] 

"Commemorated in ... 'The Ballad of 1891' by Helen G Palmer and Doreen Jacobs Bridges."   Source

January 11: The Australian Labour Federation resolved to resist the pastoralists' claims to freedom of contract.

January 15: The Earl of Jersey became Governor of NSW.

January 20: The fourth session of the Federal Council opened in Hobart.

February 1: Glebe Town Hall riot: 

"The ASL in Sydney took up the issue of the unemployed and this and the question of 'sweating' practices were major campaigns in early 1891 around which numerous rallies and marches were organised. Red flags, burning effigies and torch-lit oratory abounded. Glebe Town Hall was the location of one of the rowdiest indoor meetings, as one might expect when Bruce Smith, appears to have recognised the threat posed by the also unpopular with labor supporters appeared, on the 1st February, with McMillan. 
  "ASL members, Rosa, Higgs, Brady, Lindsay and Horkins, tried to get McMillan a hearing from the jeering, hooting crowd, in order to answer him 'in a socialist way' but the crowd persisted. One wordsmith reported: 

Healy ... captain of the Gipps Street push, one of the most desperate larrikin bands in Sydney persistently roused the crowd. He told the reporter "This affairs all organised ... we won't let him be heard. See what he's made us suffer. We've got plenty of blue-metal with us. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." ... Lashing himself to the full height of his revolutionary mission and pointing to Mr Smith (he) screeched out in frenzied tones. "There he s ... Ecce Homo!" a classic effort which seemed to threaten him with an apoplectic stroke. 
At this point the reporter tells of Smith offering Healy a glass of water, the crowd began to rush the platform and the Smith-McMillan group fled. 

"Brady's account tells of would-be ejectors rushing the ASL group 'as a scared little linen-draper on stage advocated machine-guns' against the Queensland strikers. The crowd erupted, fighting became general and Brady says he was forced towards the stage by the forward charge, that he was saved from a broken skull by a comrade preventing the impact of a table-leg being wielded by someone on the other side and that momentum carried him over the stage into unconsciousness."   Source

February 2: NSW Government took possession of all unoccupied islands in Port Jackson as public reserves.

March: Henry Lawson got a telegram, Gresley Lukin of Boomerang in Brisbane offered him two pounds a week on staff. Lukin knew Louisa Lawson as he had an office in Sydney four doors from LL's 26 Jamieson St rooms. Henry Lawson left for Brisbane late March. Stephens was working as sub-editor on Boomerang at five pounds a week, W Lane was editing the Worker for three.

March: The trade unions established The Worker as a monthly newspaper and summoned Lane to the editorship. "The unions subscribed to the Worker on behalf of their members; whereas Lane's Boomerang had been boycotted by potential advertisers, this new publication was financially secure. The Worker lived for over 80 years."   Source  (This source says 1890 but I think it must be 1891 as Lane was running Boomerang until Jan, 1891.) The Boomerang office was in the Broadway Arcade, Adelaide St, Brisbane, and William Lane’s house, which was also a hotbed of radical activity, was at 42 Quay St.

March 2: Federation banquet for 900 diners and many more spectators in Sydney's Centennial Hall to mark the start of the National Australasian Convention. Parkes gave his "One people, one destiny" speech.

"South Australian politician Charles Cameron Kingston proposed to the first Convention that the Federal Parliament should be given legislative power for 'the establishment of courts of conciliation and arbitration, having jurisdiction throughout the commonwealth, for the settlement of industrial disputes ... The motion was solidly opposed by conservatives like Sir Samuel Griffith, Premier of Queensland ... The matter was raised again at the Adelaide Convention in 1897, by which time things had changed radically. There was by now an active conciliation and arbitration system in New Zealand, one which by most accounts was operating successfully." Source  "The parliaments of Victoria and NSW in 1891 and 1892 introduced voluntary arbitration. It was introduced in South Australia in 1894. In 1901 NSW went on to legislate for compulsory arbitration."   Source

"In March, 1891, 46 delegates from all the Australian colonies and New Zealand, met in the Legislative Assembly Chamber of the Parliament of NSW and, in the course of the meeting, the first draft constitution for Australia was drawn up. The proposed constitution was partly inspired by the Canadian federal example, but adopted key elements of the American federal model, the Swiss referendum process for changing it, and retained the essential elements of the British Westminster model of parliament and government.
  However, after the return of the delegates to their respective colonial Parliaments, little progress took place. The Federation momentum was revived by a conference of people's federal leagues in Corowa in 1893 and the leaders who now emerged were NSW's Edmund Barton and Victoria's Alfred Deakin, along with Dr John Quick who suggested the way forward. At a meeting in Hobart in 1895, the Premiers generally adopted Quick's proposals and further Constitutional Conventions were held in Adelaide and Sydney (in 1897) and Melbourne (1898), finalising the form of the constitution and agreeing on the referendum process that was to follow. Popular support was now being demonstrated. Another people's convention had been held at Bathurst in1896 and smaller scale public meetings were widely held."   Source

"National Australasian Convention, Sydney; parliamentary delegates agree to adopt the name 'Commonwealth of Australia' and a draft constitution is written aboard the steamboat, Lucinda. Progress towards Federation is stalled by the colonies' concerns about their own status within a Federation. Popular support for Federation leads to the formation of the Australasian Federation League."   Source

March 17: The British steamship SS Utopia sank off the coast of Gibraltar, killing 574.

March 25: Shearers' Strike of 1891, eleven men, including three leaders, arrested at Clermont Railway Station, Queensland. The strikers were trying to prevent scabs working at Peak Downs. (The strikers were sentenced to three years hard labour, released in November, 1893).

March 26: Another seven shearers arrested at Barcaldine, Qld, by two divisions of mounted infantry. Strikers' funds running low, with provisions being raised in the cities. A thousand armed strikers camped outside Barcaldine.

March 28: 'The Selector's Daughter' published in Boomerang.

April 10: Conclusion of the National Australasian Convention in Sydney. George Dibbs had been defeated in his proposal to make Sydney the capital. One army was decided upon.

April 17: Cartoonist David Low was born in Dunedin, New Zealand.

May: Mary Cameron was transferred from Neutral Bay PS to Stanmore Superior Public School. One pupil recalls her as a strict teacher, who loved gardening. Soon, she and her mother moved yet again, to 70 Newtown Rd, Darlington. She was by now becoming more involved with the Sydney radical milieu. Her pupils found her close-cropped hair fascinating as it was not in fashion. Her voice was full and deep, friendly and optimistic. She had the children write short stories, not a usual thing in those days.

May: " ... one May meeting in particular nearly 'turned into a fiasco' when the announced ASL speakers, Healy, Rosa and others, who had been 'so loud in their advocacy of physical force', began to funk over the matter. Andrews and Schellenberg (see below) who were visiting Sydney that day and had come along 'to see the fun' had to start proceedings for the 5,000 or so present: 

'As no-one else seemed inclined Comrade Andrews mounted the stump and addressed the crowd from an Anarchist standpoint, at the conclusion of his speech calling for three cheers for the Social Revolution, which were given with a surprising energy considering it was the first time any meeting in Sydney had ever been addressed by an Anarchist. [He must mean the first outdoor meeting.] The 'Alleged Socialists' present seeing that things went along smoothly now came forward evidently being afraid of losing their hold upon the people, the latter [seeming] to enjoy the anarchist sentiments ... S.A.Rosa and J.D.Fitzgerald deeming it expedient to disavow any connection with the Anarchists and the latter, after declining just before to fill the breach, [now tried] to deny the right of Anarchists to speak upon any Socialist platform and even went so far as to tell the people they must respect law and order .... At the conclusion, having called for Andrews to lead them in his translation of the Marseillaise the majority of the crowd marched in procession through the principal streets led by the red banner and singing the Marseillaise and other revolutionary songs.'
Schellenberg, 'News from Australia', in Commonweal [UK], 12 December 1891; see also Truth, 17 May 1891

"The next week 2000 people moved towards the House defying a police warning that the ASL speakers, Healy, Brady and Cummings (from the Moree shearers) would be arrested. On its return the crowd again dispersed quietly despite military provocation. The troops' commanders were especially concerned because Parliament was being re-opened for a new session. A 'Detachment of the Permanent Artillery' had accompanied the procession as did a large number of police, detectives and soldiers, mounted and foot, with more at Parliament House. An officer, Captain Savage, 'scuffed' a man calmly surveying a cannon, 'the crowd rushed', police intervened but nothing came of it.50 During the ceremony a strong body of police was concealed in the Mint Building."   Source

May 1: Shearers' union leaders went on trial in Rockhampton. Billy Lane was in the courtroom reporting, and wrote Working-man's Paradise in aid of the Prisoners' Defence Fund. It sold for 2s 6d.

May 1: “The first May Day processions and demonstrations were held in Australia during the 1891 Shearers strike in Barcaldine and Ipswich in Queensland. Over 1,000 people took part in Barcaldine demonstrations, over 600 were mounted on horseback. The May Day procession was led by four of the leaders of the Shearers strike, they were followed by the Odd Fellows Band. Behind the band, the shearers and their supporters marched behind the Australian Labor Federation banner. Eureka flags were flown, possibly the first time since 1856, by participants in the first May Day march. The end of the demonstration was brought up by a wagon driven by a shearer, in which a young woman vigorously waved a Young Australia flag.”   Source

Wikipedia says: One of the first Mayday marches in the world took place during the strike on May 1, 1891 in Barcaldine. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that 1340 men took part of whom 618 were mounted on horse. Banners carried included those of the Australian Labor Federation, the Shearers' and Carriers' Unions, and one inscribed 'Young Australia'. The leaders wore blue sashes and the Eureka Flag was carried. The "Labor Bulletin" reported that cheers were given for "the Union", "the Eight-hour day", "the Strike Committee" and "the boys in gaol". It reported the march:

"In the procession every civilised country was represented doing duty for the Russian, Swede, French, Dane etc, who are germane to him in other climes, showing that Labor's cause is one the world over, foreshadowing the time when the swords shall be turned into ploughshares and Liberty, Peace and Friendship will knit together the nations of the earth."

This is Eight-hours day in Queensland, and the unionists in the district took advantage of the occasion to make a demonstration ...
  The feature of to-day has been the great demonstration by the unionists, in which 1340 took part. Of this number 618 were mounted. Not included in the count was the Oddfellows' band, which headed the procession. Then came the banner of the Australian Labour Federation and the men carrying samples of the trades in which they were employed ...
Sydney Morning Herald, May 2, 1891

An open air meeting was held yesterday on the south bank of the Yarra to formally celebrate for the first time in this colony what is known in European countries as "Labor Day". It has been arranged that sympathisers with the movement should meet at the Burke and Wills statue at two o'clock. About half an hour after that time there were some 250 men at the rendezvous, and about twice as many apparently careless onlookers. A little later a move was made to the Yarra bank. The Knights of Labor, members of the Single Tax League, Melbourne Democratic Club and the unemployed fell into a straggling procession, which wended its way down Burke Street and over Princes Bridge. The behaviour of those forming the procession was quite orderly. When the men defiled on to the river tow path two red flags were unfurled to the accompaniment of a feeble cheer ...
The Age, May 1, 1893   Source

May 1: Nine killed and thirty wounded when troops fired on workers' May Day demonstration in support of an eight-hour workday in Fourmies, France.

May 2: The Worker reported that the 'New Australian [sic] Settlement Association' had appointed William Lane's former associate on the Boomerang, Alfred Walker, to visit South America to investigate possibilities for a commune (with Argentine Gov't).

May 2: The murder by Aborigines of a man named Murskiewiczat at Dora Dora, NSW, sparked a manhunt.

May 6: Louisa Lawson met at the Economics Association Rooms in Pitt Street with Rose Scott, Dora Montefiore (Brian Mathews calls her Pattie), Miss M Windeyer and Hon. WM Sutter. LL, Rose and others addressed a large crowd. She voluntarily disbanded The Dawn Club for the greater good and the Womanhood Suffrage League of NSW was formed. This meeting had come out of an ad Louisa Lawson placed in Sydney Morning Herald asking for anyone to discuss or debate suffrage issues. Out of this she met Joseph Simpson who became a friend. They conspire to write a letter to the Herald as 'Viola.

"Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales took place at [Dora Montefiore's] home, 77 Darlinghurst Road, on 6 May 1891."   Source

Louisa helped launch (with Maybanke Anderson, Rose Scott, and Dora Montefiore) the Womanhood Suffrage League of NSW. She also founded the Dawn Club, which met in various locations in Sydney, including Quong Tart's tea rooms at 137 King St and 777 George St, and one at the George St markets (aka Paddy's Markets, near Chinatown). One of the meeting places was 43 Royal Arcade (possibly another Quong Tart establishment), and Louisa ran an agency for the club at 114 Hunter St.

"The Dawn Club was one such endeavour. For a subscription of 6d a week, women could attend its reading room, borrow its books and join in the 'animated discussion' of literature. As a purely literary society, the Dawn Club had its limitations: time and time again Lawson complained of 'a poor stock of literature on the woman question'. The real function of the club was social and political. Women 'exchanged ideas' and experiences, debating the Divorce Act, temperance and suffrage, strengthening the friendships which sustained first-wave feminism. And here young women were encouraged 'to exercise whatever talents they may have in speaking or writing', gaining the apprenticeship male literary networks had long denied them.
  "The Dawn Club is the most celebrated of all the literary networks established by and for women, but it was hardly unique or unprecedented. As Birks' experience in Adelaide suggests, reading groups of varying degrees of formality emerged out of the suffrage leagues, temperance unions and anti-vivisection societies, indeed, all the women-centred institutions of first-wave feminism."   Source

May 16: Henry Lawson still with Boomerang but William Lane's Brisbane Worker published 'Freedom on the Wallaby' (which fortified the resolve of striking shearers), the last two verses of which read:

Our parents toil'd to make a home –
Hard grubbin 'twas an' clearin' –
They wasn't crowded much with lords
When they was pioneering.
But now that we have made the land
A garden full of promise,
Old Greed must crook 'is dirty hand
And come ter take it from us.

So we must fly a rebel flag,
As others did before us,
And we must sing a rebel song
And join in rebel chorus.
We'll make the tyrants feel the sting
O' those that they would throttle;
They needn't say the fault is ours
If blood should stain the wattle!

More

Six weeks later, in the Queensland Legislative Council during a 'Vote of Thanks' to the armed police who broke up a Barcaldine labor meeting, MP Frederick Brentnall recited the last two stanzas as evidence of the danger of the radicals. Lawson wrote a bitter rejoinder to Brentnall, 'The Vote of Thanks Debate'. Henry Lawson at this time was editing the 'Country Crumbs' column in the Boomerang, which at first he did in prose, then verse, then prose again.

May 20: Four days after publication of 'Freedom on the Wallaby' (about the Shearers' Strike of 1891), the twelve unionists arrested on March 25 were sentenced in Rockhampton to three years' hard labour on island of St Helena off Brisbane. Unionists were enraged but the Conspiracy Trial defeated the strike.

June 1: The Government of Queensland declined the invitation to send a representative to an Australasian conference on coloured labour.

June 4: First meeting of the WSLNSW. Executive positions held by Lady Windeyer, Hon WM Sutter, Mrs Westenholme, Miss May Manning, Mrs Montefiore, Miss Rose Scott.

June 11: The Salvation Army's Limelight Department was officially established.   More

June 13: "Class governance is a usurpation, a tyranny which has its roots in the ages when military castes, ground the peaceful tillers of the soil into slavery. Our parliamentary system, of which the very opponents of one-man-one-vote profess to be so proud, is only a degenerated survival of the assembly at which in primitive times our Teutonic forefathers gathered, free and equal, to make for themselves laws for their common governance."
William Lane; Brisbane Worker, June 13, 1891   Source

June 17: Wednesday, NSW election. Henry Parkes returned. During the campaign, free traders were jeered by hecklers. George Black was elected Member of the NSW Legislative Assembly, held it for over 25 years. 

"Immediately after the June election which resulted in wins for approximately 36 'labor' candidates, a 'J. Coll' put a motion to the ASL that all professed anarchists withdraw. This was one part of the Rosa/Fitzgerald moves to take over a radical organisation as Rosa had done in Melbourne in 1889. The other parts of the package introduced were: To discontinue the unemployed agitation, to prevent anyone having any criminal record from speaking on an ASL Platform, and to exclude all 'revolutionary' language from ASL platforms. 

Early in July 1891, possibly the same day Coll produced his motion, Andrews had publicly denounced union opposition to strikes or to direct action which he called 'the only means of securing, for the mass of the people who do not seek to oppress each other, liberty, equality and fraternity'.

"Consequently I agree ... in condemning many labor leaders as [seek] to bamboozle the people into further yielding to 'law and order' and to reliance on legislative means the very negation of the principle of liberty. 
  "At the first discussion of the 'anarchist motion' there was a large attendance of ASL members and each speaker spoke for approximately half an hour.58 A split appeared inevitable. On the second occasion 'the motion which has caused a good deal of interest in Labor circles' was carried. Andrews, Whitthread, Schellenberg and others 'declared their intention of forming an Anarchist Group in Sydney'. Rosa, who spoke for exclusion, became ASL Secretary. 
  "In Parliament, Premier Parkes, free trader, had found among the 1891 newcomers laborite free traders prepared to support him in order to keep those policies pre-eminent. The viability of such a 'coalition' required minimal intervention by the forces of law and order in the shearing troubles then petering out in western NSW but still emotive enough to provide the Dibbs-Opposition with a strong weapon if a flareup, say at Bourke, occurred.60 Thus in the ASL (and elsewhere), for those LEL members who sought influence in the legislature, suppression of the rowdier ASL elements was vital. The quid pro quo for their support of Parkes was his jettisoning of the extreme anti-labor units in his 'party'. On the heels of the ASL vote came a vote for Parkes in parliament by some of the newly-elected labor MPs, a vote which Rosa applauded61 even though it split the labor 'party', while almost immediately hard-liner McMillan resigned62 from the Parkes Cabinet."   Source

June 23: With 36 seats, the newly formed Labour Electoral League held the balance of power in the NSW Parliament following elections the previous week. Demands included 8-hour working day, a Workshop and Factories Act to stop sweat labour, election of magistrates, Federation, abolition of non-voluntary defence force.

Mid-1891: JA Andrews: "By mid-1891 [JA] Andrews had helped establish some sort of 'operations centre' at the Smithfield (just out Sydney) Schellenberg farm. From this base the members of the Communist-Anarchist Group of Central Cumberland influenced the agitational scene in Sydney, and throughout Australia ... 
  "The Sydney ASL was the battleground where the first major defeat for the direct-action/non-parliamentary activists was achieved by the moderates and opportunists posing as labor politicians and rushing the chance to get paid parliamentary billets. Rosa, erstwhile revolutionist in other situations, joined forces with the centralisers to stop the ASL engaging in campaigns around unemployment, prohibited anyone with a criminal record from speaking from an ASL platform, demanded that all 'self-professed' anarchists withdraw from the League, and barred 'revolutionary' language. This series of measures in July 1891, had the desired effect of driving pro-anarchist expressions further underground and anarchist supporters into more widely flung locations. Ironically some well-known 'mainstream propagandists like William Lane stood their ground, and, while not claiming to be anarchist, wrote that anarchism was the epitome of the bush ethos, 'going mates' or 'voluntary co-operation', and 'the highest possible social ideal'.

"'The ex-editor of a North Queensland paper, the Master-Workman of a southern Knights of labor Assembly, one of the most popular of Australian Lecturers and other prominent persons in and out of the Australian Labour movement are known to their friends as ... enthusiastic Anarchists'.

"These people can all fairly accurately be identified. About a year later Lane provided some of the names:

"'WW Head, the Wagga ASU Secretary, Jim Mooney, ASU Sydney agent during the Queensland strike, Harry S. Taylor, best known of South Australian single-taxers, Peter McNaught, the Knights of Labour Master Workman, and others are all ready to give their lives and energies to that voluntary communism which is the highest individualism.'"   Source

July 8: Sarah Bernhardt began her season at Her Majesty's Theatre, Sydney. Seats sold for up to 2 pounds. She stayed on the 2nd floor of the Australia Hotel with a menagerie.  More

July 20: Creo Stanley was elected secretary of the Female Employees Society and was appointed the first female delegate of the NSW TLC on the August 1.

"During the dispute Miss Creo Stanley became the first female delegate to the TLC, winning applause when she declared that she was ‘not afraid of any man in the council; no, nor any press representative at the table yonder.’ (Nicol: 21-25)
  "The Sydney unions also had many failings. Stanley was to resign her seat five months later, protesting at the ‘unmanly and insulting conduct of brother unionists’. (Quoted in Scates: p. 81) The Typographers declared women’s membership unconstitutional, and even female-dominated industries were generally represented by male delegates on the Trades and Labor Council. In 1899 the TLC settled a dispute at Hirschman’s factory in Redfern on terms that excluded women from the union. However this decision was only approved by a small majority, and it quickly provoked criticism in the pages of The Worker."   Source

July 30: Population of Australia 3,100,000.

August 3: Bank of Van Diemen's Land crashed and closed its doors at 10:00 am.

August 7: Amalgamated Shearers' Union signed 'freedom of contract' agreement with Pastoralists' Federal Council.

August 8: Amalgamated Shearers' Union and Pastoralists' Union drew up an agreement. WG Spence now branded strikes as "barbarous".

August 21: A speech on women's suffrage in NSW parliament.

August 28: The Gambier sank in Sydney harbour after a collision that claimed 21 lives.

August 29: 'On the Wallaby' published in Boomerang. In Lane's Worker Henry Lawson thumped the tub as Jack Cornstalk (eg, 'The Patriotic League'; 'Spread the Truth').

September: William Booth in Australia.

c. September 19: Lukin wrote to Louisa Lawson that business depression forced him to let Henry Lawson go, and if things improved Henry Lawson could come back. Henry Lawson left behind 'The Cambaroora Star' ("specially written for the Christmas Boomerang" by Henry Lawson; the last Lukin could afford to take) and the sketch, 'Big Jack Dale' which he expanded in verse for the poem 'Ben Duggan' which was reworked into prose 20 years later as “Roll Up at Talbragar” and 8 yrs after that as the poem 'Talbragar'. Boomerang managed to struggle on for just another six months and ceased abruptly on April 9, 1892.

September 28: Death of Herman Melville (b. 1819).

September 29: A telephone experiment was made between Sydney and Melbourne.

October: The Trades and Labour Council was formed in Perth.

October 6: Death of Charles Parnell, Irish nationalist leader (b. 1846).

October 9: Thieves stole the mace from Victoria's Parliament House.

"Some members of Melbourne’s establishment were alleged to be clients of Madame Brussels. Superintendent F.A.Winch, second in charge of the police, and parliamentarian Sir Samuel Gillott, were two men whose careers were finished when they were found in com promising circumstances. It was alleged that magistrates also patronised the ‘high-class’ brothels.

"Annie Wilson was one of Madam Brussels' main rivals and operated brothels in the study area. In 1889 Constables Benussi and Mansfield were found hiding in a water closet in Annie's yard; Benussi was dismissed from the force and Mansfield was fined one pound. (VPRS 937:329.) Wilson was most famous for the rumour that the parliamentary mace was taken to her Boccaccio House in 1891 by a Member of Parliament; the girls were alleged to have conducted a mock parliament there. Continuing embarrassment inspired the government in 1893 to appoint a Board to enquire into the loss. The Board concluded that the mace had been stolen on 9 October 1891 for melting down by persons unknown. (Argus, 28 March 1893.) During the archeological dig, it was hoped that traces of the mace might be found; but this did not happen."   Source

October 10: 'The Shame of Going Back' published in Bulletin:

WHEN you’ve come to make a fortune and you haven’t made your salt,
And the reason of your failure isn’t anybody’s fault —
When you haven’t got a billet, and the times are very slack,
There is nothing that can spur you like the shame of going back;
    Crawling home with empty pockets,
    Going back hard-up;
Oh! it’s then you learn the meaning of humiliation’s cup.

October 10: In Botany, NSW, 67 Chinese were arrested for gambling.

October 19: The Hummer newspaper was published from Wagga Wagga, NSW, by the local branch of the Shearer's Union, until April, 1893, under editorship of Arthur Rae, at that stage an ASL member. Rose Summerfield wrote as 'Hummer Rose'. After that some time, it became the Worker, and official journal of the AWU, published from Sydney and not as enamoured of the ASL.

October 23: George Dibbs succeeded Henry Parkes again as Premier of NSW (threw out the Parkes Ministry on the Coal Mines Regulation Bill), with a majority of one, and was succeeded by George Reid (Free Trade) on  August 3, 1894. Around now, George Black and John Norton fell out. Most of the laborites became Free Traders and the movement split. Norton and the 'wildcat' mob supported protectionist Dibbs. Norton's group hoped Black could be forced to resign so a protection candidate would win a by-election. So they opened fire on Black's beating of Mrs Duggan. Black had left her about a year before and was now seen with the beautiful blonde wife of a NSW station-manager, who Black presented as his sister-in-law, even to Lord and Lady Jersey after he entered Parliament.

Beginning of Active Service Brigade, by JA Andrews (published a decade later in Tocsin, May, 1900)
"The Dibbs Ministry came in by the action of the Labour Party, and would, it was thought, at least administer the affairs of the country with some consideration for labour. The Parkes Ministry had ordered out the troops in the great strike; worse, acting Premier McMillan had actually given orders for Gatling guns to be used to mow down the crowd on Circular Quay - although old Parkes, laid up with a broken leg, sent from his sick room a cancelling order which arrived in time to spare the Ministry that blood-guiltiness.
  "But the Dibbs Ministry speedily brought in a Reign of Terror compared with which the candid toryism and frank brutality of the former administration were liberty, equality, and fraternity. ... it is notorious that there was an alliance between McMillan and Dibbs, notwithstanding their apparent rivalry for Premiership. In furtherance of this nefarious scheme, they convened so-called public meetings of electors, at which their own previously appointed agents presided; these chairmen, pursuant to a determined policy, refused to allow any questions or amendments indicating the real state of public opinion. Gangs of professional pugilists were hired to attend in the halls and "stoush" anyone who uttered a word of dissent, or who even, not being in the swim, attempted to ask a question. The daily papers reported these packed and gagged meetings as invariably passing the most enthusiastic and unanimous votes of confidence. The situation was serious on that account, as many people were likely to be deluded into the belief that Machinegun McMillan was the Messiah whom a repentant people yearned for to deliver them from the tyranny of Dynamite Dibbs.
  "It was then that ARTHUR DESMOND - poet, actuary, and revolutionist took counsel with a few kindred spirits, and they set to work to organise an efficient force, of which the first object was the breaking up of the McMillan tactics.
  "One night McMillan was to address a meeting. That evening there appeared an advertisement convening the "Active Service Brigade" to assemble at a place just over the way from the Protestant Hall. It was the first time that the name had ever appeared before the public ..."
 Source

"To play the villain at such meetings there was no actor better suited for the role than that north of Ireland Jew, William McMillan. In September 1893 Hard Cash warned readers that 'the Sydney robbers of the people, headed by McMillan', intended to enforce an 'acquiescent silence' at election meetings by the use of 'hired bullies'. Hard Cash urged Sydney workers to defy this control, to speak out at McMillan's meetings 'determined to cheer or to hiss or to move amendments ... just as they feel inclined'. If necessary workers should come armed, 'as your forefathers did in the clearing of the Danubian forests'. The workers did not bring weapons to the meetings, but they did bring their voices. "
More on McMillan's political machinations, mainly about the banks

On his return, to Sydney from Brisbane, disillusioned by getting the sack and the failure of the shearers' strike, Henry Lawson wrote for papers including Bulletin, Freeman's Journal and John Norton's Truth (some of it under pen-name 'Cervus Wright', mostly between February-May, 1892). He drank at William McNamara's shop at 221 Castlereagh St. Crashed at Aunt Emma's or Castlereagh St dosshouses. Couldn't live withLouisa Lawson.

November: "In November 1891 Lindsay brought charges in the ASL against Rosa, alleging his complicity in the betrayal of the Chicago anarchists '; and for using the SDF in Melbourne to get money. Lindsay was expelled, however, when he was unable to produce any evidence during the hearing on which Brady and Norton were both asked to speak. Rosa, who claimed Brady feared he was after the editorship of the Workman, that he 'was never an anarchist and never belonged to any anarchist organisation', went on: 

'In the next place Mr Brady was the paid Secretary of the Socialist League until domestic matters caused him to resign. He still retained his membership and became the champion and protagonist of the Anarchists in whose favor he writes doggerel, and on the night of their expulsion he made a special rhetorical effort on their behalf, but was defeated owing to the speeches of J.D. Fitzgerald and myself. Mr Edwin J. Brady and the other anarchists attribute the expulsion mainly to what I said against the wild, visionary and impracticable tactics of the Anarchists ...'

"Rosa said he was in Chicago for only half a day in 1886, that he 'was never in any police force, public or private', that he was 'never at any time openly or secretly in relations with the anarchists in Chicago or elsewhere', but that he 'took a prominent part in attempting to organise the forcible release of the anarchists'. Believing in their innocence he, with others, attempted to organise an armed expedition to Chicago of 10,000 men in detachments of 500, moving to surround the jail on a specific date and freeing the prisoners. The scheme was not carried out because of its impracticality, the antipathy of native Americans and English-speaking immigrants to the condemned men, and lack of funds. He denied that he had changed his name since his English Social Democratic days, claimed that he made speeches in California defending the anarchists and he showed membership cards for the Knights of Labor and the Socialist Labor Party of America. 
  "In a speech to the ASL, he said that if he 'favoured any anarchism it was the communist kind. But the whole theory was unscientific and absolutely impracticable, as long as men were constituted and moulded as at present'. He said he was against physical force unless it was going to succeed! In the United States in 1886, he said, the anarchists, except for Parsons, only talked revolution."   Source

November 2: Dawn published 'The Helpless Mothers' but Louisa Lawson would not print any of his 'barricade' poems. His mentor now was Fred J Broomfield but for the moment he resented his criticism, referring to him in 'My Literary Friend'.

November 7: Henry Morton Stanley, having  arrived in Australia by the Brindisi, gave a lecture at the Opera House (Sydney or Melbourne?). He's in Sydney Nov 11 - 13.

November 11: "The first issue of 'Anarchy', printed with the rough type that was [JA] Andrews' own cut-out wooden fount and tobacco-tin press, appeared to commemorate the Haymarket travesty."   Source

November 14: Rudyard Kipling in Sydney. "If you want to hurry up Federation, you ought to make a syndicate to hire a few German cruisers to bombard Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane for 20 minutes." See JB Primrose, 'Kipling's Visit to Australia and New Zealand', Kipling Journal, March 1963, pp. 12-14.   Source

Late 1891: Creo Stanley (later wife of Edwin Brady) established a co-operative laundry at Pyrmont Sydney in late 1891. She described the workings of the laundry in the following terms.
  "'The girls provide their meals on the premises, living and labouring in harmony without the intervention of unnecessary authority and dividing equally among themselves the net profits resulting from their labours'.
  "She went to Melbourne to set up another co-operative laundry but failed when the Victorian Trade and Labour Council refused to help her. Creo lived together with Edwin Brady an anarchist who was the editor of the radical publication, the Workman and later on he became editor of the radical publication, Truth. Creo Stanley identified herself as an anarchist, she is one of a small number of women who were involved in the anarchist movement in Australia on the late 1880's and early 1890's."   Source

Late 1891: Parkes introduced an Electoral Bill in the Legislative Assembly, conferring the franchise on women. Louisa was strongly for it. Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Thomas Joseph Carr, opposed it, and the Bulletin ridiculed it.

December: Melba performed at Royal Opera, St Petersburg, Russia.

December 1: Four banks and one building society collapsed in Australia.   Depression chonology

December 9, 10: Henry Morton Stanley gave two farewell lectures in Sydney.

December 27: Bushfires at Narrandera, NSW.

Henry Lawson poems in 1891

The Babies of Walloon
The Good Old Concertina
Eurunderee [I]
The Shanty on the Rise
The Free-Selector's Daughter
The Way I Treated Father
Corny Bill
At The Tug-of-War
Mary Lemaine
Trooper Campbell
Ben Duggan
Dan Wasn't Thrown From His Horse
Watching the Crows
Song of the Old Bullock-Driver
The Drover's Sweetheart
The Ballad of Mabel Clare
Freedom on the Wallaby
The Triumph of the People
Spread the Truth!
"Jack Robertson"
The Labour Agitator
One-Man-One-Vote
The Vote of Thanks Debate
The Patriotic League
The Rebel
The Helpless Mothers
Sydney Town in '91
The God-Forgotten Election
As Ireland Wore the Green
When the Irish Flag Went By
Otherside
["Cribs to be Cracked!"]
The Cambaroora Star
Coomera
The Ghost at the Second Bridge
Kangaroo Power
Cameron's Heart
On the Wallaby
["Let the Government Determine..."]
[Harry Stephens]
The Beauty and the Dude
Lay Your Ears Back and Fight
My Literary Friend
The Shame of Going Back
The Old Man's Welcome

1892

1892 in literature

July 4-September: McMahon's Point, North Sydney
September 21-27: Great Western Hotel, Bourke, New South Wales
November 24-December 26: Bourke

Gold discovered at Coolgardie (WA), also in areas now known as the Dundas and Mt Margaret goldfields.

Early in the year, Sam Rosa was expelled from the Australian Socialist League; he announced he would form an organisation from the lumpen proletariat, to be called 'the League of the Just'. Truth warned the police to keep an eye on him, as he was advocating the use of explosives. When John Norton, William Willis and Patrick Crick's Truth accused Rosa of stealing monies from the Melbourne unemployed, Rosa sued for libel. Unlike Mr Justice Long Innes in the earlier case of Black v. Norton, Mr Justice Stephen conducted the trial without prejudice, saying "An anarchist might be a person who would scorn to do a dishonest action", and expressed surprise when the jury only awarded Rosa £15. "It was not a large sum, but it assessed Rosa's character at 14,400 times the value of Black's."  (Pearl, 1958, p. 74)

Lawrence Hargrave discovered the principle of the curved aerodynamic wing.

Lord Jersey, Governor of NSW, opened the Jersey Cave at Jenolan Caves.

Sheep numbers fell from 106 million in 1892 to 54 million in 1903 – a 49% fall.   Source

Steps of the Sydney Town Hall removed and a porte-cochère (like Buckingham Palace and the White House) constructed at main entrance from George Street.   Town Hall chronology

Sydney political activist Thomas Walker set up as temperance lecture after inadvertently shooting and wounding a clergyman.

Northbridge bridge opened (Long Bay Gully, Willoughby). Replaced with arch in 1937 or '39, but original towers retained.   Northbridge

Henry Lawson could have done a Dickens at this stage and written a novel, if there was a magazine to publish it serially. he said he was no novelist, but how much of this was because he was poor and had to compose poems each week to eat? Apart from Freeman's Journal and Bulletin, no choices. Besides, of four stories of lane life at this time, Archibald only took two. Archibald now taking a fatherly interest in Henry, worried about the low life stories. Mary Cameron (later Mary Gilmore) urged Henry Lawson to write prose, and "write Australia".

WHT McNamara and his new wife, Bertha Bredt, moved to Sydney from Melbourne and opened the bookstore at 238 Castlereagh (soon forced to move to 221). (McNamara had been active in Sydney before this, as on May 4 1887 he and six others first met as a socialist group in Sydney and began taking members. They held debates on Sundays and out of these, and open-air meetings, grew the foundation of the Australian Socialist League (launched on August 26, 1887 at 533 George St, Sydney), with McNamara, George Black and Thomas Walker as leaders.) Initially, Bertha junior (16) was left behind training in nursing at the Homeopathic Hospital in South Melbourne.
  Australian Socialist League branches formed in 1892-3 at Balmain, Marrickville, Newtown, Leichhardt and Lilyfield.

Mary Cameron (Gilmore) writing for Wagga Hummer, journal published in the interest of the Australian Shearers' Union, edited by Arthur Rae ('Hank Morgan').

William Lane published Working-man's Paradise. Mary Cameron (Gilmore) was used to model the heroine Nelly. Henry Lawson was 'Arty'.

Rose Summerfield spoke at Bourke on the aims of the ASL, and 29 people joined.

Henry Lawson had no faith in utopianism or parliament and thought the newly elected labour politicians useless. Knights of Labour establishing itself in Australia 1891-2. Seven of the first 35 Labour members were of this secret society. William Lane, Larry Petrie and Henry's Blue Mountains crony Arthur Parker were all members, probably Parker who nominated Henry Lawson for membership. By 1893 it had collapsed. More of current politics in Roderick, 1991, pp 82-3. Henry Lawson more interested in the Push than the Bush at this time, around Woolloomooloo, Glebe, Redfern, the Rocks, Surry Hills, Waterloo, Annandale, Balmain (see 'The Captain of the Push', cf Bastard from the Bush (Attrib. to Henry Lawson) – note that Henry Lawson avoided obscenities in all his writing so although he might have written it, it's not conclusive and there is no evidence). Henry Lawson was living with Emma at Dawes Point around now. Because Henry Lawson composed walking up and down outside the terrace after 11pm, the local cop was suspicious of him. One night, after having been tailed, Henry Lawson wrote 'Constable M‘Carty’s Investigations'; later, M'Carty saw the poem and the two became friendly, often walking together:

’Twas a simple explanation, though M‘Carty didn’t know it,
    Which with half his penetration he might easily have seen,
For the object of his dangerous suspicions was a poet,
    Who was not so widely famous as he thought he should have been.

January-May: Henry Lawson drinking, broke and staying in doss houses, frequently visiting Mary Cameron but only when sober, and repentant. Libellous verses for Truth. "Between January and May of that year, Lawson wrote eight anti-establishment poems for John Norton, the editor of Truth. This newspaper was owned by William Nicholas Willis, a political aspirant who promoted himself in his own publication. The caustic verse included 'The House of Fossils', 'More Echoes From the Old Museum', and 'Wales the First'. They were published under the pseudonym 'Cervus Wright', Lawson’s own cryptic warning to those politicians he parodied."   Source: Henry Lawson: A Stranger on the Darling ... "One Man One Vote it may not be, but if the wealthy trifle/With Labor's rights and God's decree, we'll try 'One man one rifle'" was in one of these poems, I think  'More Echoes From the Old Museum'.

Early 1892: Anarchist Edwin J Brady (22) was editor of Australian Workman, by then the official organ of the Sydney Trades and Labour Council, at 3 pounds a week. The sub-editor's name was 'Scissors' and the chief-of-staff was 'Paste'. Henry Lawson entered his small office off George St, Brickfield Hill and thanked him for paying him the honour of stealing 'The Cambaroora Star'. They retired to the "hostel" next door "patronised by contiguous friends of the Cause, where they gave you long sleevers of colonial for threepence, and customers were free to broken ship's biscuits and small squares of cheese. We talked ... and parted reluctantly .." (Brady) They discussed the fact that "Australia starves its poets and erects statues to their memories". At this time, Henry Lawson was selling all he could write. Henry Lawson echoed Brady in 'A Song of Southern Writers' (Brady's personality stronger). Later Brady became Secretary of the Australian Socialist League.

January 14: Death of Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, second in line heir to the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Next in line is his younger brother Prince George of Wales.

February: The Royal Commission findings: In 1891, following many allegations about the Chinese and police in Sydney, Premier Sir Henry Parkes and the Governor, Lord Jersey, appointed Quong Tart and others (including Sydney's Lord Mayor, WP Manning) Royal Commissioners, to investigate police corruption. The Commission's report, tabled in February 1892, virtually exonerated the Chinese and police. Robert Travers (Australian Mandarin: the life and times of Quong Tart, Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 1981) suggests that racist John Norton's Truth, initially hostile to the Commission's findings, was diverted in its campaign against them ("A COSTLY FARCE") when Deeming the Demon Murderer was arrested on March 11 and had a more sensational story to pursue.

February 3: John Norton appeared in Central Police Court over Dora Callan, a virgin before he had her.

March: A riot of Chinese rival tongs (gangs) battling over a pak-a-pu gambling debt broke out in Phillip St, Sydney outside the Water Police Court, Benjamin Lee, SM presiding. Soon, 200 Chinese met at the Standard Theatre, calling for peace talks. The following evening, Quong Tart was elected to chair a Kai Fong (Chinese select committee) of ten merchants who would try to arbitrate, and soon the gang warfare settled down.

March: Passage of the Polynesian Labourers' Bill, extending time allowed for the Melanesian trade. William Lane was shattered, according to Burgmann (1985).

March 8: "On 8 March, the Unemployed Executive Committee met there [McNamara's Bookshop, presumably - PW] and unanimously resolved: "That this meeting is of opinion that it is the duty of the heads of the churches to make a powerful appeal to the wealthy members of their congregations to relieve the ghastly poverty and destitution existing among hundreds of men, women and children who are on the verge of starvation and suffer great privations. Unless the clergy do this they fail to carry out the principles of true Christianity". The resolution was forwarded to Cardinal Moran in a letter from McNamara under the address Leigh House. Moran's reply was firm, and charged with a severity its author would probably have curbed had he foreseen that McNamara was to publish it. It read:" (Read Moran's reply)

March 11: Frederick Deeming 'The Demon Murderer' was arrested in the small Western Australian town of Southern Cross. Deeming then became a suspect in the Jack the Ripper case; there were unsubstantiated reports that samples of handwriting from 'Jack' and from Deeming were written by the same person. The trial began as scheduled on April 28, 1892. Deeming's lawyers were Alfred Deakin, later Prime Minister of Australia, and William Forlonge. The jury needed very little time to reject Deeming's plea of insanity and declare him guilty. He was hanged on May 23, 1892.   More

" ... the press, in search of a scapegoat for the murders, hastily threw suspicion on Deeming, neglecting the fact that he was in South Africa at the time of the murders." Source

March 26: Death of Walt Whitman (b. 1819).

March 26: The Bulletin published 'The Captain of the Bush'. See 'Bastard of the Bush', attrib. Lawson and the controversy over authorship.

April 9: Boomerang ceased publication.

May 1: Sydney: ASL organised its first May Day in the Domain. Hummer said there were 6,000 there, the SMH said 2,000, Daily Telegraph said 3,000.

May 23: Melbourne: Frederick Deeming was hanged. 'The Demon Murderer' had been arrested in the small Western Australian town of Southern Cross on March 11. Deeming then became a suspect in the Jack the Ripper case; there were unsubstantiated reports that samples of handwriting from 'Jack' and from Deeming were written by the same person. The trial began as scheduled on April 28, 1892. Deeming's lawyers were Alfred Deakin, later Prime Minister of Australia, and William Forlonge. The jury needed very little time to reject Deeming's plea of insanity and declare him guilty.   More

May 28: The Bulletin published  'A Day on a Selection' which pleased Archy, and 'A Song of Southern Writers' (note that this blames "the people" as much as ruling class):

SOUTHERN men of letters, vainly seeking recognition here-
Southern men of letters, driven to the Northern Hemisphere!
It is time your wrongs were known; it is time you claimed redress-
Time that you were independent of the mighty Northern press.
Sing a song of Southern writers, sing a song of Southern fame,
Of the dawn of art and letters and your native country's shame ...

In the land where sport is sacred, where the labourer is a god,
You must pander to the people, make a hero of a clod!
What avail the sacrifices of the battles you begin
For the literary honour of the land we're living in?

June: The young William Holman spoke on 'A Plea for Liberty' at Leigh House; in the same month William Spence, the President of the Amalgamated Shearers Union, spoke on 'The Ethics of the New Unionism'. Source

June: George Black, MLA for West Sydney, sued John Norton for 5,000 pounds for libel, over allegations in Truth that Black beat his common law wife, Mrs Duggan.

June 10: At Broken Hill, NSW, a public meeting convened by socialists, chaired by John Ferguson, secretary of the Broken Hill trades and Labour Council; motion to form an ASL branch was carried unanimously amid cheering.

June 11: The Limelight Department, one of the world's first film studios, was officially established in Melbourne. Arguably one of the world's first film studios, the Limelight Department was operated by The Salvation Army in Melbourne, Australia, between 1891 and 1910. The Limelight Department produced evangelical material for use by the Salvation Army, as well as private and government contracts. In its 19 years of operation, the Limelight Department produced about 300 films of various lengths, making it the largest film producer of its time.   More

June 17: (HL's birthday) Fire destroyed Sydney’s Theatre Royal. It was built on the site of the Prince of Wales Theatre which was twice destroyed by fire – in 1860 and 1872.

June 23: Louisa Lawson was offered membership of the Senior Debating Club, which she accepted. She went on to represent both Senior and Junior Clubs on the School of Arts Committee, but resigned in protest of nitpicking.

July 3: 6,000 people gathered at a mass rally at Central Reserve in Broken Hill. The miners were on strike to protest wage cuts and the usage of scab labour.

"In July 1892 the Broken Hill Strike began. Police spies were sent immediately and armed troops were sent later to escort 'free' labourers to the mines. Strike leaders were arrested in September and jailed in October. In Sydney, a 'zealous reformer' told members of the Government there was a revolutionary plot being hatched, and then proceeded to try to catch some dupes in a bogus plot concerning a 'Provisional Government'. Having orchestrated the 'dupes' production of a MANIFESTO he tried to engineer a crowd-rush on Parliament House knowing that there were troops with machine guns in position behind the building. He hoped that any 'incident' would vindicate his information to the Dibbs Cabinet and earn him a reward. An MP, George Black, asked to join the Provisional Government was at the time told of the troops in hiding. Sizing up the situation he rushed outside to stall the unruly crowd, by filibustering and dissipating their energies. Andrews meanwhile had - confronted one of the 'dupes', who can be identified as Larry Petrie, with partial information about the manifesto and who confessed his part.
  "A few months later, a former friend of Andrews warned him of an impending threat to frame him in some bomb-plot or violent 'event'. This same person then attacked Andrews in a Sunday paper, accusing him of making bombs and claiming he had immense influence on the labour movement which was taking up policies of murder and mayhem. There were also implied references to Petrie. Another, more sympathetic journalist, also warned Andrews that he was being set up for arrest on some capital charge."   Source

July 4 - September: HL's address is McMahon's Point, North Sydney.

July 9: In The Bulletin, Henry Lawson opened the Lawson/Paterson debate with 'Borderland',  later re-titled 'Up the Country' when it was republished in Lawson’s 1896 edition of In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses.
  Two weeks later, Andrew 'Banjo' Paterson retaliated with 'In Defence of the Bush', and soon all around Australia readers were waiting for the next instalment in the popular magazine. Bulletin publisher-editor JF Archibald ran the poetic joust for several months, with other 'Bully' regulars such as John LeGay Brereton, Edward Dyson, Bulletin literary editor AG Stephens and Joseph Furphy joining in, but brought it to an abrupt close, either when he finally realised it had started with collusion between Lawson and Paterson, or because the contest had become vicious and personal, with both of the main protagonists seeming to have forgotten the original purpose.
  By this stage, the two poets were satirising each other's poetic style to great effect, but the poverty-stricken Lawson (who had been born in a tent or hut on the goldfields) did not have the cushioning of Paterson's patrician lifestyle and would have been particularly stung by Banjo's mockery, particularly of his addiction to alcohol.
  Lawson was one of the few who knew the identity of 'The Banjo' at this stage. Paterson later said that the contest was Lawson's idea, to raise a few pounds. Henry Lawson fared better in the debate, but posterity has awarded the "win" to Banjo as the city lawyer poet presented a rosier view of the bush. Note that Lawson had never been "way out west" at this stage, and had not recently been very far out in the country at all, although he was 'back o' Bourke' by the time the last literary shots were fired.  
  Henry Lawson, who is generally believed to have suffered from bipolar disorder and was never emotionally strong, harboured resentment over Paterson's poetic sarcasm for years. On June 28, 1896, in Truth magazine (a scandal rag) was published, anonymously, Lawson's 'The Man from Waterloo', a parody of Paterson's successful 'Man from Ironbark' which had appeared in The Bulletin as far back as December 17, 1892. Lawson had to wait this long for publication, which he was able to achieve in the rush of popularity of Paterson's first volume of verse, The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses, which made a sensation. Lawson did not claim authorship of his poem until four years later, including it in Verses Popular and Humorous. Roderick (Roderick, Colin, Henry Lawson: a life, Angus and Robertson. Sydney, 1991) says that a full twenty years passed and Lawson still showed hurt in 'In the Height of Fashion'.
  Lawson was one of the few who knew the identity of 'The Banjo' at this stage. Paterson later said that the contest was Lawson's idea, to raise a few pounds. Henry Lawson was better in the debate, but posterity has awarded the "win" to Banjo as it was a rosier view of the bush. Note that Lawson had never been "way out west" at this stage, and had not recently been very far out in the country at all.
  Shortly after the Battle of the Bards, Archibald, who was taking a fatherly interest in Lawson, concerned by Lawson's drinking and also the fact that much of what the poet and author was writing was about the down-and-out masses of Sydney's poor areas, asked writer Edwin J Brady why Lawson wasn't writing more bush material. "Why doesn't he go back to the bush?" the Bulletin editor asked. "No money" replied Brady. At this, Archibald decided to send Lawson to Bourke, and it was from this sojourn of just a few intense months in the far west of New South Wales that most of Lawson's lasting rural tales are derived.
  By September 21, 25-year-old Henry Lawson was out west, financed with five pounds and a one-way railway ticket. He wrote to his Aunt Emma: "The bush between Bathurst and here is horrible. I was right, and Banjo wrong."

"The controversy in verse continued for several months, with various other poets and writers such as John le Gay Brereton, Edward Dyson, A. G. Stephens and Joseph Furphy joining in.

"With 'In Answer to Banjo and Otherwise', Lawson replied to Paterson’s previous poem with a similar vein of caustic wit. He suggested that Banjo, in his bush wanderings had 'travelled like a gent', and was content to experience the advantages of city life while writing in glowing terms of the wonders of the bush. The poem was later retitled 'The City Bushman'.

"Lawson then followed this poem with another on 10 September, the 'Grog-an’-Grumble Steeplechase', which was a parody of Banjo’s 'Open Steeplechase'. Other poets and parodists continued the rhyme for a time, while Lawson and Paterson took a back seat to the proceedings.

"Paterson retaliated with 'An Answer to Various Bards' on October 1. Again, the poem was an attack on Lawson, referring to him as 'the sad and soulful poet with a graveyard of his own' and including thinly-veiled references to Lawson’s sometimes excessive drinking habits with the references to 'beer', 'pubs' and 'bars'.

"By the time Paterson’s last poem was published, Lawson was in the far western New South Wales town of Bourke. His passage there had been financed by J. F. Archibald of the Bulletin, and, in his own words, Lawson confirmed: 'Towards the end of '92 I got £5 and a railway ticket from the Bulletin and went to Bourke. Painted, picked up in a shearing shed and swagged it for six months...'"   Source: Background to Henry Lawson: A Stranger on the Darling

July 17: Rose Summerfield brought her theatrical talent and energy to Leigh House. "Rose figuratively led her audience out of Leigh House and onto the street — to the places where her audience lived and worked, and where their hopes and fears were played out." She quoted from Shelley's 'The Mask of Anarchy', which is 91 stanzas commemorating Peterloo (1819) and condemns Lord Castlereagh.   Source (excerpts from her speech)

I met Murder on the way –
He had a mask like Castlereagh –
Very smooth he looked, yet grim; 
Seven blood-hounds followed him.

July 23: Bulletin published 'The Drover's Wife', which pleased Louisa Lawson and Mary Cameron, who claimed the story outline was hers. Mary claimed the drover was her father, but Henry Lawson said "Aunt Gertrude Falconer was the 'Drover's Wife'". (Maybe a bit of both.)

August?: Brady and Henry Lawson in Bulletin office. Archibald concerned about HL, takes Brady aside and asks what's wrong with him. He also knew Henry Lawson was not imaginative but wrote from his own life. "Why doesn't he go back to the bush?" Brady: "No money". Archibald secretly arranged five quid and a rail ticket to Bourke where there was friction between the Amalgamated Shearers' Union and the Pastoralists' Union regarding rates and conditions. Also, it had a rail head. It was also a recruiting centre for Lane's New Australia Co-operative Settlement Association. Brady grabbed Henry Lawson from downstairs, took him to the First and Last, and told him.

September: 'There's a Bunk in the Humpy'.

September: William Lane visited Bourke, public speaking. High unemployment. Two of HL's union mates, Billy Wood and Thomas Hicks Hall were involved in the New Australia recruitment office. Lane was back in April, 1893.

September 21 - 27: Henry's address is Great Western Hotel, Bourke, New South Wales. He arrived in Bourke on the Western mail from Redfern where his friends waved him off (sent by Archibald); he had borrowed books from Arthur Parker. He took a room at the Great Western Hotel in Richmond St. Wrote to Aunt Emma. Soon drunk, put to bed by the barmaids. he was in different pubs, then in a tiny, unfurnished shared (Swede or Norse) house. They held their goods in common. House-painting, but quit after a while. (See Roderick, 1991, pp 90 ff for his meetings with union officials in Bourke.) Donald Macdonnell, shearer had a strong influence on him. Bob Brothers was 'The Giraffe', also known as 'Long-un', 'Send Round the Hat', 'Chuck-in-a-Bob' and 'Ginger Ale'. The Afghans weren't liked by the teamsters, but 'The Giraffe', hearing an Afghan was sick in his camp, took him a billy of soup.. 

Bourke: "Lawson wrote eight poems for the Western Herald and Darling River Advocate ... While writing his ‘Bourke’ poems, Lawson obtained temporary employment as a house painter. He later worked as a rouseabout at Toorale woolshed before trekking many miles overland, eventually reaching the village of Hungerford on the New South Wales-Queensland border ...

"Lawson recorded little of his time spent in Bourke and biographers have long puzzled over the chronology of his wanderings about the region. Thankfully some events that occurred during those months were enlarged upon in later times by others, such as Billy Wood, Jim Gordon, Edwin Brady and, John Hawley. Using these reminiscences, many written over thirty years later, Henry Lawson: A Stranger on the Darling is a reconstruction of how the authors imagine Lawson spent his time in Bourke and beyond during 1892-93."   Source: Background to Henry Lawson: A Stranger on the Darling

September 29: Charles Lawson was sentenced at Mudgee to 7 years for burglary.

October 1: 'A Stranger on the Darling' published in the Western Herald.

October 31: Arthur Conan Doyle published The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

November: Henry Lawson took up with James William Gordon (Jim Gordon, aged 18). They did house-painting together for John Hawley until Henry Lawson resigned.

November: The journal New Australia commenced publication.

November: Social Democratic Federation of Australasia (SDF) founded at a convention at Leigh House. "It credentialled Francis Sceusa of the ASL, to represent it at the Zurich International Socialist Conference, and established links with HM Hyndman's SDF in Britain. By 1895, the SDF had obtained headquarters at 395 Pitt Street, where it held lectures of a Sunday evening, in competition with the performances at Leigh House." Burgmann, 1985. William and Bertha McNamara were the two main founders, having been getting disillusioned with their own creation, the ASL.

November 19: Walter William Head, now editor (succeeding Arthur Rae) of Hummer in Wagga, also brought out the first edition of New Australia (with HL's 'Otherside' on the first page), both of which Mary Cameron wrote for.

November 20: Drover Hallahan drowned at North Bourke.

November 21: Henry Lawson attended funeral of Hallahan, which gave idea for 'The Union Buries Its Dead'.

November 23: Henry Lawson joined General Labourers' Union at Bourke.

November 24 - December 26: HL's address is Bourke.

November 24: Henry Lawson wrote to Arthur Parker that he would be down "at Christmas" and that he expected a job in shearing sheds (they were along Darling River) first. He didn't go to Sydney as planned but set out with Jim Gordon and probably Ernest De Guinney.

End of year: William Holman, 20-year-old cabinet maker, did ASL lecture tour of Newcastle, new branches formed. Around the same time, Billy Hughes regularly attended/performed at ASL Sunday night meetings at Leigh House, from late-1892 until 1898 when he resigned. He joined in 1891. His father was an actor and he was a great public speaker and the most talented Leigh House lecturer. He and his family had immigrated from London in 1888 and lived at Balmain.

"However, his manual occupation notwithstanding, Holman was perhaps a little remote from the class he was most earnestly seeking to influence. One Sunday evening at Leigh House, in the course of his lecture on Spencer, he digressed to illustrate a point: 'take a brick, ladies and gentlemen, weighing, let us say, about 4 lbs ...' Before he could continue his calculations, the secretary of the Builders labourers union sat bolt upright and exclaimed in an agitated stage whisper: 'Cripes, that's the blooming brick I've been looking for all me life'."
Burgmann, Verity, In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of Labor, 1885 - 1905, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1985, p. 55

Mid December: On the western side of the Warrego River is Gumbalie near which Jim Gordon and Henry Lawson camped for a few days (40 mi from Bourke). Henry Lawson saw tribal aborigines for first time. "They're a dying race, Jim, and they know it. I can read it in their eyes. I was suckled on a black breast." Later, when drunk, he said, "My father was a Spaniard". Later, in 'A Bush Publican's Lament', he wrote, "an old gin nursed me an' me mother when I was born and saved me blessed life".
  At Kelly's Camp Bore was the incident with the carpet snake inn the tank. Lawson got sick of De Guinney, who allowed them to drink from water with a dead snake in it, and De Guinney left. (Later he was at Cosme.) After this they went down along the Warrego River on foot and Henry Lawson and Gordon worked as picker-ups at Toorale Station, though Jim Gordon calls it Fort Bourke (probably wrongly). Henry Lawson often talked of going back to Sydney; homesick and hating the bush. 'Stragglers' describes the awful shearing life. Henry Lawson wrote on the Darling River. It was actually a wet season: see Stranger on the Darling, pp. 169-171.

December 17: Paterson's successful 'Man from Ironbark' appeared in The Bulletin.

December 25: Henry Lawson probably spent Xmas at Bourke. 

December 27: Henry Lawson and Gordon and Ernest De Guinney (Russian nihilist) began tramp to 'The Corner' (where NSW, Qld and SA meet; map). 

December 31: Henry Lawson and Gordon at Salmonford Hotel, Fords Bridge on the Warrego River. ("an alleged river with a sickly stream that looked like bad milk" source). Richard Green publican of Salmonford Hotel (and former Mayor of Bourke).
  

Henry Lawson poems in 1892

A Derry on a Cove
A Study in the "Nood"
The Love of a "God"
A Prouder Man Than You
Ned's Delicate Way
When Your Pants Begin to Go
Constable M‘Carty’s Investigations
The Captain of the Push
Billy's "Square Affair"
"Wales the First"
When the Duke of Clarence Died
The English Queen
The House of Fossils
More Echoes from the Old Museum
When the Bush Begins to Speak
'Cross the Border
May Day in Europe
The Old Rebel Flag in the Rear: A May-Day Song
Modern Parasites
Charley Lilley
Rise Ye! Rise Ye!
The Lay-'Em-Out Brigade
You'll Triumph Not in This Land
The Southern Scout
Our Children's Land
Borderland (Up the Country)
Cruise of the "Crow"
A Song of Southern Writers
The Press Gang
The City Bushman
The Poets of the Tomb
The Grog-an'-Grumble Steeplechase
"Tambaroora Jim"
Mary Called Him "Mister"
Jack Dunn of Nevertire
There's a Bunk in the Humpy
Taking His Chance

1893

1893 in literature

January 16: Hungerford, Queensland
February 6: Bourke
June [-November]: C/- Mrs Emma Brooks (Aunt Emma), North Sydney
November 18-27: C/- SS Waihora, to Wellington
December 6: 123 Cuba Street, Wellington, New Zealand

A new fruit market was built in Campbell Street on the Paddy’s site in an attempt to woo back the growers who had set up their own Cooperative Fruit Exchange in Bathurst Street. Paddy’s Market moved indoors. Construction began on the QVB, at first called the Queen Victoria Markets. It was not successful as a market and the Haymarket then dominated Sydney.

By 1893 the ASL had 15 branches and more than 9,000 members in NSW, along with branches outside NSW. Its politics were predominantly reformist state socialist.

Sydney afternoon Echo ceased.

Jack Lang started frequenting WHT McNamara's Book and News Depot.

Plural voting abolished. Before, some voters, through property ownership or university degrees, had more than one vote.

Harry Rickards established the Sydney Tivoli theatre and Tivoli vaudeville circuit.   Source

Men 21 years and over given the vote in Western Australia. Aboriginal men specifically excluded from voting. Secret ballot introduced in Western Australia.

Gold found at Wyalong (NSW) and silver at Mt Lyell (Tas).

"The total number of licensed public vehicles in Sydney [in 1894] was 2,180, made up of 290 omnibuses, 26 wagonettes, 1,215 hansom cabs, and 649 drays and vans. A coachbuilder with a turn for figures has elicited from this bare statement of numbers, a fact which should be encouraging to those whose principal occupation is the making and repairing of this class of vehicles. By allowing twelve years to be the average life of each of these vehicles, he shows that, without making provision for increase in number, Sydney requires each year, under normal conditions, 24 omnibuses, 2 wagonettes, 101 hansom cabs, and 55 drays and vans. Then estimating the value of each omnibus at £110, each wagonette at £70, cab at £100, and van at £20, he shows that the total amount which must be spent in the bare renewal of old vehicles is £13,980 per annum. Carrying the calculation further it is shown that, on supposition that two-fifths of the cost of each vehicle is labour, the wages paid amount to £5,592, and if each man employed receives an average of £100 per annum, it follows that under ordinary conditions 56 men are required to be constantly at work to keep Sydney supplied with public vehicles."
Australasian Coachbuilder and Saddler, July 1895

"Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austrian throne (and whose assassination at Sarajevo in 1914 led to the start of the First World War), visited Australia and wrote approvingly of the country, though he noted the likelihood of it becoming an economic competitor for the Austro-Hungarian Empire in agriculture."   Source

Government-sponsored land co-ops
"Leongatha Labour Colony, Leongatha, Vic., 1893 A subsistence wage was given to unemployed people while learning farming skills and living communally. 3451 people lived at Leongatha during the first 7 years. Closed in 1919 ...
  "Pitt Town, Wilberforce, Bega , N.S.W., 1893 
  "Pitt Town's board stated that 'the principle of the settlement shall be purely co-operative, and all settlers shall be required to work ... for the common benefit of all members'.
  "Pitt Town: 500 people (100 households), mainly unemployed Sydney workers on 800 hectares. By October 1894, Pitt Town had 1800 fruit trees, 18 000 grape vines, cleared 200 hectares for agriculture, erected 65 kilometres of fencing, and dug 16 dams, with a sawmill and church and 120 small houses. Ceased in June 1896 with 7 settlers ...
"Co-operative Land Settlement Act, Qld., 1893 
"Excel Pioneers, Nil Desperandum, and Obertown Model, were south of Roma. Industrial, Mizpah and Monmouth were near Chinchilla. Bon Accord, Byrnestown and Resolute were north-east of Gayndah. Protestant Unity was south of Gympie, Woolloongabba Exemplars, near Noosa, and Reliance, near Springsure; 2000 people on 28 310 hectares in all.
  "Mizpah, March 1894: 156 people, 'doing remarkably well .... The ground is very well adapted ... for various kinds of agriculture. Five acres have been planted with corn, and six with potatoes. There are six wooden dwelling houses, and two stores, a bootmakers shop, a little committee room, butchers shop, fenced-in stockyard, and blacksmiths shop. All the wives and families of the settlers have ... settled down to their new life.... The spirit of comradeship had been greatly strengthened by the fact that all the men were members of the Salvation Army ... Many of them had been out of work for eighteen months'. Woolloongabba Exemplars, April 1894: 'have already some three acres cleared and being planted. We have spanned one creek with a bridge, and are completing another bridge between Eumundi and Lake Weyba. By this means in a few days we shall find an outlet to both Gympie and Brisbane for our fish. In the near future it is quite within the possibilities for us to be our own shipowners, by which means we would have all the markets on the eastern seaboard open to us. We have a spirit of cheerfulness and fortitude that gives evidence of "grit" and good promise in the future'.
  "Nil Desperandum: 30 families, 'six horses, two ploughs, two drays, 140 sheep, harness, agricultural implements etc.... The group possesses ... twelve acres of cleared land eight of which have been fenced, ploughed, and sown, five cottages (good substantial buildings), and numerous humpies. Every member of the group has a garden and vegetable plot ... The group work nine hours per day in gangs ... As most of the members ... are hard-working and in earnest, the writer looks upon the success of the group as assured'.
  "The Queenslander [newspaper], June 1895: 'average human nature is not the material for a millennium yet; and those who fondly dream of Utopia must be content to live in dreamland. [Members] started full of faith with enthusiastic belief in the possibilities of communism [but jealousy, envy, strife, and all uncharitableness have sprouted like weeds among the wheat of good fellowship.'
  "Dissolved in mid-1896. 83 ex-members selected a total of 12,954 acres of the land."   Source

Lady Mary Elizabeth Windeyer, Rose Scott and Louisa Lawson were active, but usually Louisa Lawson not mentioned because of class. Maybanke Anderson was also well off. Note that Rose Scott later called Louisa Lawson 'Mother of Women's Suffrage'. Also, Scott thought that electoral politics slowed down women's ability to change society.

For most of 1893, Truth was edited by WH Traill. Adolphus George Taylor resumed editorship (not ownership; that was William Willis?) at the close of the year. This year, Traill published 'The Union Buries its Dead' and 'The Australian Marseillaise' (under the name of 'Joe Swallow'). (Pearl, 1958)

Henry Lawson would have met JA Andrews, maybe Arthur Yewen (French's Forest commune), Laurence Petrie (he met him at Leigh House), Rose Summerfield, other radicals.

"The Sydney groups took the brunt of repressive legislation and jaundiced legality, culminating in 1893-1895 with the 'Hard Cash', 'Justice' and Andrews trials, all for sedition, libel or for being likely to endanger public order. There were, during the period 1890-95, numerous 'strike-leaders' jailed and the position of the philosophy of anarchism and of individual anarchists is also significant in these 'class-war' acts.
  "Since the masses didn't rise either for the labour movement or for anarchism, and since 'New Australia', William Lane's anarchist scheme involving hundreds of people split almost as soon as it arrived in South America, optimism gave way to mere doggedness or despair."   Source

SA Rosa and WHT McNamara got 3 months and 6 months jail for selling a publication (Hard Cash) that criminally libelled a financial corporation. Meanwhile, Desmond was plastering banks with GOING BUNG stickers, for which he got 2 months hard labour. In prison he wrote 'Reconstruction' (Worker, May 6, 1893):

"If you do not want to work a swindle that will roll the lucre in –
If you do not care for risking what the loaded dice may win –
If you're really in a corner, and have failed to live on suction,
Do your duty like a Trojan, and prepare for 'Reconstruction'.

After his release Desmond continued to write a lot of verse.

January: By now, Mary Cameron writing evangelizing articles for New Australia, the office of which was at 111 Elizabeth St (Walter Head's office). There she met David Russell Stevenson, 31-yr-old second cousin of Robert Louis; William Lane supposedly modelled his character Ned on him, in Working-man's Paradise. She was informally engaged to him; they were to marry in New Australia (mother gave blessing as long as Paraguay turned out OK, and then she could follow him). She stayed behind to save; Henry Lawson knew of this; when she went to Paraguay in 1896, she broke off the engagement. She wrote to Henry Lawson and told him. Stevenson ended up marrying Nurse Clara Jones, another original New Australian. (This was in 1914 after her husband William Laurence died in 1914. Stevenson was wounded in WWI and went back to Paraguay and married Clara.)

"When she met Lane in 1892, Mary was a schoolteacher in Sydney, a tall, young eccentric-looking woman with herauburn hair chopped extremely short.She was deeply impressed by Lane whowas recruiting for his dream of asocialist commune in Paraguay, wherethere would be no bosses — except himself, as it turned out. Mary loved people with a good brain and William Lane was a remarkable writer and a charismatic figure. He was happily married; there is no suggestion therewas any sexual involvement between them. She joined Lane’s New Australia Movement and after school would head into their city office and help edit their journal. It was here she met a tall, handsome, swashbuckling Queensland shearer called David Russell Stevenson. Like a lot of bushmen at that time, Stevenson was self-educated and used to carry Shakespeare in his saddlebag. Mary became absolutely infatuated withhim. At the same time Henry Lawson was absolutely infatuated with her and begged her to marry him and come with him to Western Australia. But once she’d met Stevenson, poor Henry, who was two years younger than Mary and a puny specimen compared to Stevenson, was forgotten, except as a wonderful friend who she could talk to about writing.When the colonists sailed off in 1893, Mary couldn’t go because single women weren’t wanted until the colony was established. The one single woman taken, a Queensland nurse called Clara Jones, was needed because the NSW government said they couldn’t go without a nursing sister on board. Clara and Stevenson fell in love on the voyage. Lane, who put a stop to their flirtation, told her Stevenson was engaged to Mary. Thinking Stevenson had lied to her Clara married the first man to come along. Before Mary arrived, the first colony had broken up because of Lane’s dictatorial behaviour and Lane had formed a second colony over 100 km away. Because the schoolteacher had remained with the original mob, Lane wrote to Mary and begged her to come out. She had just turned thirty, the age at which she believed she would become an old maid, a future she devoutly feared. So she packed up, putting in eight yards of white muslin suitable for a wedding dress, and at the end of 1895 off she went. First of all a little sailing ship to New Zealand, then a tramp steamer and the perilous voyage around Cape Horn up the east coast of the continent to Montevideo. From there she had to negotiate her way without any Spanish onto a paddlesteamer and travel 1600 km up the great rivers to the capital of Paraguay. From there she took a steam train and got off at a siding. She had expected Stevenson to meet her but it was Lane’s brother who met her for the thirty-mile ride to the rough little colony, just thatch huts and a jungle clearing. They had a welcome dance for Mary that night and Stevenson didn’t dance with her once. Humiliated and embarrassed Mary wrote to her old swain Henry Lawson saying, ‘Why don’t you come over after all?’ But Henry had just married and didn’t respond. Mary went to the colony not just for love, but for its ideals on gender equality. What she didn’t realise was the colony had scrapped the clause about gender equality. As a single woman, she was in a pretty embarrassing situation. Before long she was reading to a man called William Gilmore who was in the colony hospital. He was nearly illiterate, but he was a good, kind, handsome man and before long an engagement was announced. I speculate that Mary may have prodded Gilmore towards a proposal because he was so shy, and although not in love with him at that time, I think she did fall in love within the marriage. I think their physical relationship turned out to be a wonderful excitement for Mary. There is a rash of quite sensual poems that she writes at that time."
From 'Bluestocking in Patagonia' by Dr Anne Whitehead: PDF & HTML

Jones, Clara (Nurse Jones; c. 1867 - after 1964), nurse and labor activist. In 1891, aged about 24, she was nursing at Clermont Hospital, near Rockhampton, Queensland, close to where the shearers’ strike was at its most intense and violent. The following year she hoisted a red flag over the hospital at Muttaburra in celebration of the election to the Queensland Legislative Assembly of Thomas Ryan, one of the Barcaldine Strike Committee. One of the hospital committee members pulled down the flag and she hauled it up again. In 1893, aged about 26, she came from Bourke to Sydney to emigrate to New Australia, and while at Balmain with dozens of others sitting out the weeks-long wait to sail, challenged William Lane to show the Chairman’s report; it was part of a wider series of grievances and incidents that led to something of a split into two parties – those who trusted Lane and those who did not – even before sailing on July 16. Only three weeks out to sea on the Royal Tar en route to South America in early August 1893, she strolled the decks with Dave Stevenson, who was engaged to Mary Cameron, who had remained in Sydney to write and recruit for New Australia). William Lane, whose wife Annie was keeping a “custodial eye” on Stevenson for Mary’s sake, overreacted and banned single women from being on deck at night without parents – Clara was the only single woman this could have applied to. The incident led to near mutiny and, in a manner that became a pattern at New Australia and Cosme, Lane offered to resign. Clara Jones was in love with Dave Stevenson all her life, all through the many years living on the same Paraguayan community as he, but having heard in 1893 (in Balmain, before embarkation) that he was engaged to Mary Cameron, was married on New Year’s Day, 1894, by William Lane to Billy Laurence. She had a loveless but dutiful relationship with her husband who died in Buenos Aires following surgery when he was attempting to enlist for WWI, and she married Stevenson in 1916. The Stevensons were among the last originals to leave Paraguay, which they did in 1927.

January 1: Henry Lawson and Jim Gordon at Fords Bridge on the Warrego River.

January 13: The Independent Labour Party of the UK has its first meeting; founder chairman was Scot James Keir Hardie (b. 1856).

January 16: Henry Lawson wrote from Hungerford, 1,000 km from Sydney on the New South Wales-Queensland border, to Aunt Emma: "I carried my swag nearly two hundred miles since I last wrote to you, and I'm now camped on the Queensland side of the border – a beaten man. I start back tomorrow – 140 miles by the direct road – and expect to reach Bourke in nine days. My mate [presumably Jim Gordon] goes on to Thargomindah." Gordon later insisted he tramped back to Bourke with HL, but Henry Lawson wrote he did it alone. However, a sentence in the first version of 'Baldy Thompson' indicates Henry Lawson had company. Royal Hotel at Hungerford was also the Cobb & Co staging post. In 'By the Banks of the Murrumbidgee' (January, 1916) Henry Lawson refers to Gordon as James Grahame, and that was a pen-name later used by Gordon. Henry Lawson wrote this about Hungerford. More

"We found Hungerford and camped there for a day. The town is right on the Queensland border, and an interprovincial rabbit-proof fence – with rabbits on both sides of it – runs across the main street ...
  "Hungerford consists of two houses and a humpy in New South Wales, and five houses in Queensland. Characteristically enough, both the pubs are in Queensland. We got a glass of sour yeast at one and paid sixpence for it – we had asked for English ale.
  "The post office is in New South Wales, and the police-barracks in Bananaland. The police cannot do anything if there's a row going on across the street in New South Wales, except to send to Brisbane and have an extradition warrant applied for; and they don't do much if there's a row in Queensland. Most of the rows are across the border, where the pubs are."

See 'Out Back':

He tramped away from the shanty there, when the days were long and hot,
With never a soul to know or care if he died on the track or not.
The poor of the city have friends in woe, no matter how much they lack,
But only God and the swagmen know how a poor man fares Out Back.

He begged his way on the parched Paroo and the Warrego tracks once more,
And lived like a dog, as the swagmen do, till the Western stations shore;
But men were many, and sheds were full, for work in the town was slack—
The traveller never got hands in wool, though he tramped for a year Out Back.

In stifling noons when his back was wrung by its load, and the air seemed dead,
And the water warmed in the bag that hung to his aching arm like lead,
Or in times of flood, when plains were seas, and the scrubs were cold and black,
He ploughed in mud to his trembling knees, and paid for his sins Out Back.

January 28: The Federal Bank of Australia closed in Melbourne, starting a collapse of banks in Australia.   Depression chronology

January-June: Henry Lawson painting in Bourke, having tramped 480 km. In January or February he got a letter from New Zealand inviting him to edit a newspaper but he doubted his ability. Data on the stories and verse at this time in Roderick, 1991, pp 97 ff.

February 4: Bulletin published 'Crawlalong', HL's second piece since he got to Bourke.

February 6: Letter to Aunt Emma on return to Bourke. "Bulletin hunting me up for copy, but they must wait till I get down." He had some work from the Western Herald. A squatter on the way back to Bourke had given him as much tucker as he could carry, and a pound. He had tramped 300 miles with a swag and swore never to do it again. In Bourke, probably sometimes he slept in the park or else under a skillion roof behind the Union office in Mitchell Street. He got a house in Mitchell Street; just to the west was the Cobb & Co depot, across the road was William and Sam Doughty's Horse Bazaar and general store.  Nearby were the pubs the Carriers' Arms (single-storey brick; licensee Watson 'Watty' Braithwaite) on the corner of Mitchell and Wilson Streets, the 2-storeyed Caledonian (known at various times as The Pride of Erin and The Golden Stairs), and the Shakespeare where the first NSW branch of the Amalgamated Shearer's union was formed in 1886. There was also the Post Office hotel in Oxley Street, publican Paddy Fitzgerald. Breaker Morant had stayed there while on a visit from a border sheep station where he was horsebreaker. The Gladstone Hotel was on the corner of Mitchell and Richard Streets, licensee Joseph Donohue. The Salvation Army played outside the pubs.

February 18: "Harry Rickards took up the lease of the Garrick and renamed it, The Tivoli Theatre [79-83A Castlereagh Street – PW]. Rickard's wife Kate, had persuaded him to take up the lease and it proved a good investment. As the Tivoli, the theatre introduced the Sydney public to such acts as illusionist, Chung Ling Soo, and Little Tich. Harry Rickards' Tivoli Theatre, soon became a byword to the people of Sydney."   Source

February 28: RL Stevenson arrived in Sydney as a guest of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of New South Wales. His health was much better this time, because Samoa had agreed with his delicate constitution. He gave numerous interviews.

March: Walter William Head moved the office of Hummer and New Australia from Wagga to 111 Elizabeth St, Sydney, which became New Australia Co-operative Settlement Association (NACSA) Central Office. New Australia printed at the Worker's plant at 215-217 Palmer St. Mary Cameron found quarters for Head and his wife at her place at Newtown, Newtown Rd (City Rd), opposite Sydney Uni. Head and Mary both wanted to go to Paraguay but stayed behind to enrol new settlers. The New Australia project was short of funds and a fundraising drive raised 1,000 pounds, 300 of which came when Rose Scott mortgaged her house. Lawson spending more time with Mary. He probably wrote 'Rejected' (Bn, October 21, 1893) in response to her refusal to marry him.

March 4: End of term for President of the United States Benjamin Harrison; succeeded by Grover Cleveland.

April 16 (Sunday): William Lane addressed 300 at Ralph's Hall, Bourke on New Australia. Secretary Tom Hall of the General Labourers' Union took the chair.

Approaching May: "Approaching May, 1893, two detectives, both French, posed as anarchist comrades with bomb plans and attempted to get samples of Andrew's typefaces and/or his handwriting on an explosive formula. He kept them at bay. A new clandestine magazine, 'Hard Cash', began circulation exposing bank malpractices and the tie-ups between self-interested members of the 'elite'."   Source

c. April 30: Max O'Rell arrived in Sydney on the Monowai from San Francisco via Auckland and stayed at the Australia Hotel, lunching the nest day with the Governor of NSW and his wife, Lord and Lady Jersey. He stayed three weeks then took the train to Melbourne. He also wrote about Australia.

May 1: The 1893 World's Fair, also known as the World Columbian Exposition, opened to the public in Chicago, Illinois, USA. The first United States commemorative postage stamps were issued for the Exposition.

Mid-1893: By now, the police had spent 60,000 pounds trying to infiltrate the Active Service Brigade (ASB).

June: This month Henry Lawson wrote 'All Unyun Men' in Bourke. Return to Sydney in charge of five rail trucks of cattle, with a drover's pass, from John Anderson & Co. ('Peter' Anderson and Co. in the poem), to Flemington or Homebush. The five carriages were changed to a goods train at Nyngan. Sydney was now in depression and ferment of labour activism following the failed strikes of 1890-92. Much public curiosity about William Lane's New Australia venture. In the dosshouse beside McNamara's at 238 Castlereagh, Henry Lawson met Arthur Desmond who was in Sydney this and next year. Anti-Semitic, Nietzschean, vitriolic man who edited and published Justice for the Active Service Brigade, and Hard Cash. Jack Lang helped Desmond print Hard Cash "in the front room of a cottage in Rose Street, Darlington" (JTL). Desmond's blood-and-thunder influenced HL; see 'A Leader of the Future' (Worker, 1893), which on November 18, 1893, also in Worker, "Murphy" pilloried and compared Henry Lawson to Donnelly, presumably Ignatius Donnelly. Desmond later went to London and Chicago and is said to have died in Palestine in 1918 while serving with Allenby! While writing blood-and-thunder in Worker, Henry Lawson was "more companionable" (Roderick) in Truth, now run by WH Traill, MLA, formerly a Bulletin colleague of Archy.

June 17: "Three Irish prospectors, Patrick Hannan, Tom Flanagan and Daniel Shea rode out east of Coolgardie in their quest. They were forced to camp overnight at Mt Charlotte, 20km short of their destination, when one of their horses lost a shoe. It was a stroke of luck - in the next few days they collected 100 ounces of alluvial nuggets. Hannan registered the Reward Claim in Coolgardie on June 17 1893 and the Kalgoorlie rush was on. Two other prospectors soon located further large gold deposits 5km south which was the start of the famous 'Golden Mile'." ("In 1892 Arthur Bayley registered his Reward Claim with a find of 554 ounces of gold from Fly Flat in Coolgardie. The WA Goldfields had been discovered.")   Source

June 18: Truth published 'The Emigration to New Zealand'. Many labourites heading for NZ at this time, and Henry Lawson would also have gone by September but for the hope of editorial position on Worker, with Lane leaving for Paraguay. He later wrote that he edited Worker with no pay for a time, "but that mysterious inner circle, the trustees and their friends, brought an editor from another province".

c July: The Bulletin predicted that Lane would one day be "foaming at the mouth and uttering poetry beneath a tree". (Not necessarily same edition) called Paraguay a "miasmatic land of half-breeds, goitre and assorted pestilences". In July the Bully reported that some workers in Brisbane were planning a Queensland settlement like New Australia ("barring the goosechase and the senoritas") and suggested it be called New Paraguay (maybe a fictitious story). Even the Brisbane Worker, under new editor Ernest Blackwell, doubted whether New Australia could succeed, but Sydney Worker was still edited by Walter Head (who had founded it under its earlier identity of the Wagga Wagga Hummer) so it was loyal to Lane. WG Spence was ambivalent, tending to be supportive but twice refused Lane's invitation.

July 9: Ten thousand people assembled at Sydney's Domain to farewell the New Australia Utopian emigrants, who sailed for South America on July 16 (qv), rather late due to delays imposed by the Emigration Office.

As he was overwrought from all his efforts, William Lane, the group's leader, was not present at the afternoon in the Domain, which also served to welcome some strike leaders from Broken Hill who had been released from prison, and to express solidarity with striking members of the Seamen's Union.

The meeting was chaired by Chilean-born Chris Watson, President of the Trades and Labor Council and later Australia's first prime minister, and addressed by 22-year-old William Holman, later Premier of New South Wales. Holman's brother Charles, 20, was one of the emigrants. William Holman moved the farewell resolution.

Meanwhile, one of those who later emigrated to New Australia, Larry Petrie, was making preparations to dynamite another ship ten days later, the SS Aramac off the Queensland coast.

July 16: On a Sunday afternoon, William Lane and 220 (?) followers set sail on the Royal Tar (following delays and obstructions set in train by the Dibbs Government, and farewelled by Mary Cameron, Rose Soley, WG Spence, Walter Head et al on the launch Ivy) to establish New Australia, a utopian community in Paraguay, arriving at Montevideo on September 13. Price: not less than 60 pounds per family. Henry Lawson wanted to go but had no money for the fare, and thought of stowing away. The copper hulled Royal Tar was built of bluegum and bloodwood by John Campbell Stewart (and/or W Marshall) at Copenhagen Mill, Nambucca Heads, on the north coast of New South Wales in 1876, near where this almanac is produced. Before the departure, NACSA members took turn at HQ staying awake guarding the canvas bags of sovereigns. There would have been little money had not Walter Head withdrawn 1,000 pounds from a tottering bank the day before it closed for reconstruction. They were still short of money and Mary Cameron tried to get a donation from wealthy Mrs Elizabeth Wangenheim, and Dave Stevenson tried from the wealthy Sydney Burdekin, both without success.

More at July 16 in the Book of Days

" ... just as the Royal Tar leaves for Paraguay, David Andrade leaves Melbourne for the Dandenongs to effect his communal utopianism (approximately 85 other groups in Victoria alone) while numerous other settlements are attempted around Australia including a remnant of the Barcaldine shearers' camp which is settled near the Alice River. Significantly, Lawson goes to New Zealand and Jack Andrews tries the hermit life on Bombira Hill."   Source

Other communes at around this time: The South Australian Land Act  of 1893 provided land for village settlements: Lyrup, Mt Remarkable, Waikerie, New Era, and Murtho. Murtho had same joining fees as New Australia. Started with ten families, ten single men and three single women and lasted six years as a village settlement. In Queensland there was the Alice River Co-operative Settlement, formed after the 1891 shearers' strike.

July 27: SS Aramac bombing; anecdote involves Mary Cameron, Larry Petrie. Henry Lawson was staying at Mary Cameron's rooms in Newtown Rd (City Rd). (WH Wilde, 1988, p66, has the poem 'The Crows Kep' Flyin' Up'.)

July 31: "A conference of federation leagues and ANA branches was held at Corowa, and from it emerged a highly significant proposal, moved by Dr John Quick, "That in the opinion of this conference, the legislature of each Australasian colony should pass an Act providing for the election of representatives to attend a statutory convention or congress to consider and adopt a Bill to establish a federal constitution for Australia, and upon the adoption of such Bill or measure it be submitted by some process of referendum to the verdict of each colony".   Source

August 11: Electoral Bill conferring the franchise to women passed by the New Zealand Parliament and passed in the Legislative Council by a majority of two on September 8.

August 14: John Le Gay Brereton gave Henry Lawson (whom he did not meet till after September, 1894) a rave review in Hermes, A Sydney Univ. journal. He did so again in September issue.

September 2: Henry Lawson was so affected by 'The Crows Kep' Flyin' Up' [Mary Cameron/Mary Gilmore's poem about the blowing up of the SS Aramac] that he came to her house in City Road, 'with a trembling lip'. In his hand, he held the cutting he had torn from Worker, published today (according to Roderick, 1991). More 

August 26: Mary Cameron/Mary Gilmore and Henry Lawson had sketches alongside each other in Worker.

September: Billy Hughes launched the ASL branch at Young, NSW.

September 9: Brisbane Worker began serialising Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto.

September 13: Royal Tar arrived at Montevideo.

September 19: New Zealand women gained the vote.

Women's suffrage, Australia • Women's suffrage New Zealand • Women's suffrage, South Australia • World chronology of women’s suffrage

September 28: New Australia settlement began at Puesto De Las Ovejas (The Sheep Station).

October 11: Official foundation ceremony at New Australia.

October 21: 'Rejected' (aka 'The Rejection') published in The Bulletin; about Mary Cameron/Mary Gilmore probably.

November: Emma Miller marched with the Shearers' Strike of 1891 prisoners when they were released.

November 7: Colorado women were granted the right to vote.

November 11: Arthur Rae, now acting editor of Sydney Worker (because pressure of New Australia business forced Walter Head to resign, but also because he was going to New Australia in Paraguay, a plan that never came off because his son died while lost in the bush -- see January 27, 1894), published a par in Worker announcing new editor, J Medway Day of Adelaide Voice. This tipped it for Henry Lawson, who thought the job was his, and he prepared to leave for New Zealand.

November 18: Henry Lawson boarded Waihora (Capt. J Anderson) for Wellington, NZ, leaving with Walter Head a poem for the settlers of New Australia. (See 'The Emigration to New Zealand': I'm off to make enquiries as to when the next boat sails:/I'm sick of all these colonies, but most of New South Wales,/An' if you meet a friend of mine who wants to find my track,/Say you, 'he's gone to Maoriland, and isn't coming back.'" See also 'For'ard':

Our beef is just like scrapin’s from the inside of a hide,
And the spuds were pulled too early, for they’re mostly green inside;
But from somewhere back amidships there’s a smell o’ cookin’ waft,
An’ I’d give my earthly prospects for a real good tuck-out aft — ...

But the curse o’ class distinctions from our shoulders shall be hurled,
An’ the influence of woman revolutionize the world;
There’ll be higher education for the toilin’ starvin’ clown,
An’ the rich an’ educated shall be educated down;
An’ we all will meet amidships on this stout old earthly craft,
An’ there won’t be any friction ‘twixt the classes fore-’n’-aft.

On the same day, 'Some Popular Australian Mistakes' was published in the Bulletin. In NZ he told Tom Mills he had been given by the Union Steam Ship Company a first-class ticket for his fare but he travelled steerage to get "copy". He worked in a sawmill, and very much enjoyed his job on a gang repairing telegraph lines. The same day, 'A Leader of the Future' was pilloried, as it happens also on November 18, 1893, in the Worker, a writer signed as 'Murphy', comparing Lawson to the American politician and Atlantis proponent, Ignatius Donnelly.

November 18: Active Service Brigade - A cryptic ad in Sydney's Saturday Daily Telegraph read: ACTIVE SERVICE BRIGADE ('A' Division) — Church Parade, St. Andrews Cathedral, SUNDAY MORNING, 11; to hear of 'Him who has been murdered by the Law'. Countersign, 'Silence'. By order (7).

"All that could be known for certain was that members of the Active Service Brigade's 'A' Division would parade to St Andrews Cathedral, the principal home in Sydney of the Church of England; they would enter during the traditional Sunday morning service and symbolically claim the spirit of Jesus for their cause, highlighting his fate before an unjust law. By subverting the highly regulated 'anti-theatre' of the religious service, the Brigade might provide the worshippers with an insight into what was happening outside as the colonial economy collapsed into the economic depression and mass unemployment that followed the banking crisis of early 1893."   Source

When some 30 members of the Active Service Brigade 'A' Division marched the following day, November 19 they were almost outnumbered by the plain clothes police officers watching them. More in Book of Days.

November 18: Mary Cameron/Mary Gilmore's song 'The Men of New Australia' was published in New Australia, the journal of the William Lane-led New Australia movement. John Le Gay Brereton published a review of it, which led to him meeting Mary. She, in turn, was the one who introduced him to Henry Lawson, at her place at Enmore Rd sometime after September, 1894.

November 23: Waihora arrived at Auckland. Henry Lawson disembarked to find work, but no vacancies.

November 27: Henry Lawson arrived in Wellington with one pound in his pocket, the day before women voted. He slept in the 'Rec', a public park, in a soon-to-be-laid sewerage pipe (Prout, 1963 says "most of the time" for his three months in Wellington he slept this way). After that he spent two weeks at the home of Tom Mills when a compositor on the Times told him of HL's plight. Mills describes him as writing laboriously at a desk, and doing the cooking for both of them as Mills was working till late at night. In Wellington Henry Lawson teamed up with the man he would call 'Steelman' in his short stories. They got work in the Hutt Valley hauling logs for a mill, but were sacked because "they were'nt bushman', the contractor's comment causing Henry Lawson great hurt.

November 28: Wellington, NZ: Henry Lawson observed women voting, streets full of people. He wrote that it seemed like a pleasant outing rather than anything world-shattering. He soon met Gresley Lukin, now editing the Post.

December 2: NZ: Wellington Fair Play mentioned Henry Lawson was in town.

December 4: Melba made her Metropolitan Opera House debut, New York in Lucia di Lammermoor.

December 6: Henry Lawson wrote to Aunt Emma from 123 [133] Cuba St, Wellington, asking for a photo, which appeared in Fair Play on December 16, accompanied by a biographical notice, which contained the first reference to his baptism and that his father wished him to be Henry Hertzberg Lawson, but the parson was deaf, hence 'Archibald' for his middle name. Other Wellington papers around now, such as the Mail and Tom Mills's Times contained Henry Lawson work or notices, eg 'For'ard' in NZ Mail, December 22. This month, an editorial in Times surveyed the career of Arthur Desmond in Sydney, condemning him. Lawson came to his defence with 'Arthur Desmond', not in the Mail or Times but in Fair Play (signed 'Australian Exile').

December 15: Billy Lane expelled Fred White, Louis Simon and Thomas Westwood for breaking New Australia's temperance rule.

December 31: Second shipload of settlers left Adelaide for Paraguay, arriving February, 1894. W Gilmore one of the passengers. His name appears in the list in New Australia of January 27, 1894, above an article by 'MJC' (Mary Cameron, who later married Gilmore, in Paraguay). They were met at Asuncion by Lane and "Royalists", but also "Rebels" Westwood, Pope, Blundell, Meidecke and others who tried to dissuade the newcomers from going Lane's colony. None turned back, except 60-year-old William Kempson, whose luggage seemed to be lost, and he walked up to Lane at Asuncion and punched him in the face.

Late 1893 Queensland Parliament passed the Co-Operative Communities Land Settlement Bill.

Henry Lawson poems in 1893

Sweeney
When the "Army" Prays for Watty
"All Unyun Men"
Lake Eliza
The Paroo
Saint Peter
Out Back
Tally Town
Knocked Up
The Great Grey Plain
The Western Stars
"Sez You''
Antony Villa
The Waving of the Red
The English Ne'er-do-well
Rejected
Something Better (this poem was in favour of New Australia and published in the New Australian)
"Coralisle"
The Other Gum
"Ryan's Crossing"
The Emigration to New Zealand
"For'ard"
The Morning of New Zealand
Arthur Desmond
Here's Luck!
The Union Buries its Dead

 

1894

1894 in literature

[February]: Hutt valley, North Island, New Zealand
[March]: Pahiatua, North Island, NZ
[April-May]: C/- W. Louisson, Telegraph Camp, Blenheim and other places in the north of the South Island of NZ
[June-July]: Kekerengu, South Island, NZ
July: C/- SS Tasmania, to Sydney
August-December: C/- Worker Office, Sydney (Living with Mrs E Brooks at North Sydney)

HH Champion, disillusioned with his colleagues by 1894, left the Independent Labour Party and emigrated to Australia where he stayed until his death.

Henry Lawson wrote 'A Word in Season', published later in Worker. It stood up for the squatters and also townspeople. These ideas he expanded in 'The City and the Bush', published December 8, 1894 in Worker.

Maybanke Anderson brought out the first edition of Women’s Voice. Women were the typesetters, compositors and writers with Maybanke as editor.

Architect John Kirkpatrick completed the new Sydney Hospital to a revised design.

"S.A. Village Settlements, S.A. 1894 
"Gillen, Holder, Kingston, Lyrup, Moorook, Murtho, New Era, New Residence, Pyap, Ramco and Waikerie were along the Murray River between Renmark and Morgan in South Australia. 1770 people initially.
   "Murtho, organised by John Birks along the lines of New Australia was the most utopian. Murtho and Mount Remarkable were not initially dependent on government support. The others depended on government support and were composed of impoverished, unemployed people. The Act which established these Village Settlements was repealed in 1902, the groups were disbanded and the land sold as small, private farms ...
   "Southport, Tas. 1894 In October 1894, 20 families took up residence. The settlement was abandoned in 1898."   Source

Jandamarra declares war on white invaders in the west Kimberley. He holds the west Kimberly at bay until his death on April 1, 1897.

Lever & Co creates Lifebuoy Soap.   Lever & Kitchen

Mary Cameron was organizing strike funds and helping collect food and clothing for strikers.

The first tram service to Bondi Beach (powered by steam).

"By 1894, the radical litterateur could choose between McNamara's Book and News Deport and the Active Service Brigade's Reading Rooms a few doors opposite. Over in Pitt Street, the Australian Socialist League ran a bookshop of its own, while papers like the Democrat, the Dawn, the Workman and the Worker were also depots for the dissemination of radical literature ... McNamara's Lending Library, an adjunct to his Bookshops, boasted 20,000 volumes. All could be hired out on a daily or weekly basis, 6d for the most popular titles, 3d for the others ... Beyond Adelaide [the Henry Georgists] relied on the Red Van: a wagon laden with books, pamphlets and newspapers and driven by men with a good deal more politics than horsesense. Generally such tours would last several weeks, blazing a trail of literature across the South Australian countryside. Only when supplies of oats and books ran low, would the van return to the city, hastily refitting for another campaign of leafleting.
  "The Red Vans were British in origin; even the slogans emblazoned across their side – 'Free Men, Free Land' – were borrowed from the Land Nationalisation Society."   Source

Amalgamated Shearers' Union and General Labourers' Union amalgamated to form the Australian Workers' Union. "Macdonell successfully pushes for ASU/GLU amalgamation New South Wales to form the Australian Workers Union. Temple walks out of conference; Spence replaces him as general secretary. Pastoral strike."   Source

January: Henry Lawson sent 'Australian Bards and Bush Reviewers' and 'In the Days When the World Was Wide' to Bulletin from Wellington, NZ. Both in some ways marked the end of his labor idealism.

January 1: At New Australia, William Lane married a number of residents including Billy Laurence and Nurse Clara Jones.

January 27: Mary Cameron was editing New Australia at the time (this the first issue) because her boss Walter Head was in Victoria (summoned by telegram) with hundreds of searchers looking for his lost son in the bush at Gippsland, disappeared from its mother, Carrie Head (idea for HL's 'The Babies in the Bush' and a story of a drover named Walter Head whose two children were lost in the bush). The Heads had sold their home, soon to leave for Paraguay, and Mrs Carrie Head had taken their three children to Victoria to farewell family. Mrs Head and children stayed in Victoria, they separated, and she died in 1909 on her daughter's 21^st birthday. Mary Cameron's article 'Country People for New Australia' (by 'MJC')  published in New Australia. Above it, a list of passengers who had set sail from Adelaide on December 31, including 'W Gilmore'. They married four years later at Cosme.

January: Towards end of month, Henry Lawson left Wellington, NZ and went to Pahiatua where he contributed to the Pahiatua Herald, editor Alex Baillie. He stayed for six weeks.

February: The Bridge Street Burglars: "In February 1894 the [Active Service] Brigade organised a meeting at the Queen's Statue. The Statue of Her Majesty Queen Victoria at the intersection of King and Macquarie Streets was a social space, like the nearby Domain, that the radicals claimed as sites of dissent, and where they might provocatively conceive of an alternative social system — in the shadow of the Supreme Court immediately to the south and Parliament House, a short way down Macquarie Street. The Statue was also a meeting place for the unemployed, the idle and the rabble-rouser, and a reasonable audience – of the curious if not always the committed – could be expected for a rally. Dwyer, Justice claimed, made 'a powerful speech denunciatory of the Government' to a crowd of '3-4,000'. Douglas followed, warning of the presence of an estimated 20-30 police detectives in the crowd, with another 50 said to be lurking 'in ambush' within the nearby government Mint building. Douglas invited the crowd to 'treat these paid mercenaries of oppression as they would a leprous Chinaman'."   Source

February 13: Burwood's Town Clerk William Redfearn shot Mayor William Paisley in Burwood Council Chambers.   Source

February 15: French anarchist Martial Boudin attempted to destroy the Royal Greenwich Observatory, London, England with a bomb.

February 15: Walter Head was now back editing New Australia. William Lane wrote a long religious letter to Head which Head ill-advisedly printed in the journal. Perhaps Head wasn't thinking clearly because of the recent loss of his son. In Paraguay, classics scholar James Murdoch, who was to be the headmaster, had changed his mind when he detected mystical fanaticism in Lane, who was now saying he was consulting God about the commune's affairs. Murdoch hurried back to Japan.

February 19: Sydney Anarchy Trial of February, 1894. William McNamara and Sam Rosa (colleagues of Sydney anarchist Arthur Desmond) were convicted on charges of selling an edition of the anarchist journal Hard Cash.

"The colonial depression and the banking crisis were troubling indications that the apparently solid structures of society might collapse, a fear that also manifested in attitudes to the poor, political radicals and criminals. The 1894 trial of the burglars Charles Montgomery and Thomas Williams over the serious assault of five police officers dramatised these tensions. It may seem unusual to preface a chapter dealing with 'anarchy' trials with reference to the Montgomery and Williams case: it may not have seemed odd in Sydney in 1894. For the late nineteenth century middle class mind, in the opinions of leader writers, judges and politicians, anarchy was not so much a radical ideology as a far more frightening and vague fear. Anarchy was a phenomenon of threat and social breakdown, expressed in the violence of Montgomery and Williams' brutal assault on the agents of the law, the subversive challenge of the Active Service Brigade, and the alleged dynamite plots of anarchists. Montgomery and Williams' crimes armed the NSW Police. The Dibbs Government, facing an election later in the year, quickly agreed to popular press demands to issue patrolling constables with revolvers ... Montgomery and Williams were captured directly outside the Water
Police Station in February 1894 ... Montgomery and Williams were tried before Justice Stephen in the Central Criminal Court at Darlinghurst on 3 April 1894, and found guilty on the charges of attempted burglary and intent to murder the constables. Intent to murder carried a sentence of death in New South Wales and Tasmania, the only parts of the British Empire where the charge carried this ultimate penalty. When the jury returned a guilty verdict, with a recommendation of mercy for Williams, Justice Stephen revealed that he was bound by the codes of the system. 'I must pass the sentence that the law provides for', he explained, and condemned them both to hang at Darlinghurst Gaol."   Source: (PDF) Before the Law, Ch. 5: The Sydney Anarchy Trials, 1894-95  View as HTML

March?: William Lane sent his wife Annie back from Paraguay to do more recruiting. She did not want to go. She took her infant son Donald and two daughters, Nellie (10) and Hazel (4), accompanied by Mrs Ellen Bilby.

March: Sir George Dibbs told the Legislative Assembly that "even 1,000 pounds" would be a reasonable outlay to help repatriate distressed Australians at new Australia.

March 5: Pahiatua Herald published HL's 'First Impressions of Pahiatua', a piece that suggested he had arrived there on foot. Another published here around this time was 'Stiffner and Bill' and Stiffner was a predecessor of Steelman, a conman. (Steelman took his place in 'A Bluff that Failed', 1895.) His last contribution to the PH was a poem, 'The Home of the Gods'. At this time, Gertrude Moore, daughter of a local cartoonist, George Moore, fell in love with Henry Lawson. Easter Monday they took a walk together, which shows in her verse 'Waiting: A Bush Idyll', pub. in the New Zealand Mail, June 17, 1897.

March 24: Mary Cameron's front page of New Australia acknowledging the split in Paraguay (81 settlers seceded), but extolling Lane.

April: Whiteley King, secretary of Pastoralists' Federated Association, notified the Aust. Workers' Union, formed same year by amalgamation of shearers' and general labourers' unions, that lower wages would be paid and disputes to be settled by shed manager. Negotiations broke down in July.

April: Lane and his supporters had by now decided to form a new colony and leave New Australia. Sixty-three sided with Lane, among them 36 single men.

April 6: Notice of farewell to Henry Lawson (left that day) printed in Pahiatua Herald. In Wellington he borrowed 3 pounds from JH Simpson and crossed Cook Strait in a tub called the Moa, to Picton, where he had asked Jack Louisson to set him up with a job. Now three months working on telegraph line. Wrote little: nothing in Bulletin or Worker between March 24 and August 11. He wrote poem about wreck of the Taiaroa when he saw the graveyard at Kekerengu, south of Blenheim.

April 7: First issue of New Order, collaboration of Arthur Desmond, WM Hughes, Holman et al (Hughes and Holman both state socialists and inspired by Edward Bellamy; both opposed women's suffrage until after socialism attained; this kept some women out of ASL). Henry Lawson later referred to the "brown-eyed girl that loved him in the latter end of spring", which he wrote this or next year but pub. Bn June 24, 1909. But he didn't reciprocate her love. Later, Gertrude Moore believed that 'Beautiful Maoriland; or, Love and the Union''s love reference was written for her. She tried to strike up a correspondence in 1907, 1914 and 1920, to no avail. She never saw the significance of that poem, which meant "it's over".

April 20: Quong Tart received a formal letter of bon voyage from his staff, for his "prolonged visit to China".

May: Outnumbered by his opponents, William Lane having seceded from New Australia, set up at Cosme (about 72 km from New Australia) with about 60 followers.

May 1: Jack London arrived with Coxey's Army in Washington, DC.

May 11: Pullman Strike: Three thousand Pullman Palace Car Company workers went on a "wildcat" strike in Illinois.

May 12: Last of Lane's followers left New Australia on foot, to join the others at a temporary camp about 30 miles south-east. They camped at Paso Cosme, a ford on the Tebicuary River, and continued towards their new settlement of 23, 155 acres which they named for the camp. On the way, five men disappeared. They finally settled on July 7. At Cosme they only worked an eight-hour day and five-day week. most worked half a day on Saturday to accrue holiday credits. By 1896 the working week had been reduced to four and a half days.

May 14: Mary Cameron sometime around now was living at 46 Newtown Rd, still zealous for New Australia. William Lane's wife Annie arrived from Paraguay with her infant son Donald and two daughters, Nellie (10) and Hazel (4), in order to recruit more eligible women; soon converted 46 Newtown Rd into a boarding house (Souter says Annie Lane and Mrs Bilby stayed at the boarding house at Mary Cameron's invitation, quite a different matter). From this date, the NACSA office in Elizabeth St was open 24 hours a day. Annie Lane was not recruiting women, but Gilbert Casey was, for the original New Australia. In this he was aided (with little success) by Rose Summerfield, contributor to the Hummer and Brisbane Worker. She had held freethought lectures in her home at Waverley.

May 22: Sir George Dibbs, Premier of New South Wales, proposed a scheme of unitary government for the Australian colonies.

"From October 1891 to December 1893, with Edmund Barton as his Attorney General advocating federation, Dibbs supported Barton, despite his own preference for unification, but severe financial difficulties, a major strike at Broken Hill, and repeated political obstacles in the parliament, prolonged the whole federation debate.
  "After Barton left the administration in late 1893 Dibbs outlined a detailed idea for unification of the colonies which he spelt out in mid 1894.
  "Following July 1894 elections unfavourable to his party, under new electoral laws that introduced universal male suffrage, Dibbs resigned office on grounds the Governor refused to accept his advice and appoint 10 new Legislative Councillors. George Reid then became Premier, called fresh elections in mid 1895, when Dibbs lost his seat.
  "Appointed Managing Trustee of the State Savings Bank of New South Wales by Reid, Dibbs argued against federation at the 1898 and 1899 referenda, leading the Anti Federation League in 1899. Although strongly in favour of Australia united as United Australia he opposed federation as being bad for New South Wales financially, and because Sydney would not be the national capital."   Source

June 9: President Gonzales of Paraguay was overthrown in a bloodless coup.

June 12: Sydney Anarchy Trial of June, 1894: Henry Tregarthan Douglas, John Dwyer and printer William Mason, Thomas Dodd and printer's assistant George MacNevin of anarchist paper, Justice, were tried before Justice Sir George Long-Innes in the Central Criminal Court, Sydney. Jack Lang, who worked with the defendants in the Justice office, was called as a witness.

June 30: Worker trustees announced decision to float a daily, mainly to help the Labor Electoral League (Labor Party) candidates in the forthcoming general election. Henry Lawson didn't know it was to be a one-month experiment when they asked him to join it. Losses for first month were 2,000 pounds.

July: Negotiations broke down between Pastoralists' Federated Association and the Aust. Workers' Union. Tensions in industry reached breaking point.

July 7: William Lane and those loyal, making 56 Australians in all, settled at Cosme, Paraguay.

July 17: Billy Hughes became Member for Sydney-Lang (until July 3, 1895; 11 months 17 days). Sir George Dibbs lost his seat at the election (July, presumably the 17th), retired from public life, and was appointed managing trustee of the savings bank of New South Wales. He held this position until his death on August 5, 1904.

Mid-July: Having received an invitation while in NZ to join the new (Daily) Worker, Henry Lawson (aged 27) caught a steamer delivering poles, to Wellington, caught the SS Tasmania (Thos McGee master) with 146 homecoming Australians, arrived back in Sydney on July 29. 

July 21: The Australian Workman said that William Holman as a speaker had no equal in Australia.

July 28: New Australia edition discussed details of New Australia split. Mary Cameron's role diminished from now. Walter Head soon disappeared, living in Tasmania later as Walter Alan Woods), with cloud of fraud (unproved). Lane and Mary did not believe Head guilty over fraud in the case of the sale of the Royal Tar; Mary said years later that Alexander Forrester and his assistant Tom Hall forged certain documents and destroyed others.

July 29: Henry Lawson arrived back in Sydney. The (Daily) Worker had failed three days before he arrived, as he only found when he went to the office in Bathurst St, so he had grounds for resentment. "No one was responsible for the Daily Worker, nor for me" Henry Lawson wrote in 1899 in the Bulletin. The Worker was also paying strike-relief funds and going broke. They put him on the weekly Worker as 'provincial editor', work that kept him in touch with regional labor affairs. Mary Cameron writing for Worker too.

August 1894 possibly around the 27th or 28th as it was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald on August 29, 1894): The Darling River paddle steamer, the PS Rodney, was carrying non-union shearers north to Tolarno Station and was burnt near Pooncarie (between the stations of Moorara and Polia) on the Darling River, New South Wales, by about 300 unionist shearers in protest at it being used as a strike breaker during an industrial dispute. The Pride of the Murray and the Trafalgar also carried non-union shearers. A re-enactment was conducted in 1994 when more than 700 people witnessed the burning of a replica. "In early 1895 the steamer Nile was involved in salvaging material from the wreck. The boiler, and most of the machinery was removed and a quantity of tools and ironwork were also recovered. The hull was broken up and the debris was drawn out of the river." Source
  This event reunited Henry and Mary.

August 3: George Reid (Free Trade; received knighthood in 1897) succeeded George Dibbs as Premier of NSW, and was succeeded on September 14, 1899 by William Lyne, Protectionist. More on Reid

August 6: Billy Saunders set out from Cosme to act as its agent and clear up matters at NACSA.

August 11: Kelley's Army – Federal troops drove some 1,200 protesting jobless workers from the nation’s capital across the Potomac River. Led by an unemployed activist, Charles ‘Hobo’ Kelley, the motley group came from western states and camped in Washington, DC beginning in early July. The ‘soldiers’ in Kelley’s Hobo Army included a young journalist named Jack London (1876-1916) and labour leader William ‘Big Bill’ Haywood (1869-1928). Coxey’s Army, another group of unemployed men, also marched on Washington at around the same time.

August 25: 'Beautiful Maoriland (Love and the Union)' published in Worker. It told of an NZ worker about to sign a 'yellow-dog' or non-union contract. The voice of his dying sweetheart urges him to 'Be true to your mates; be true' and he drops the pen as if it were a snake. Today Freeman's Journal wrote: "Already two members of the Lawson family (Louisa and Henry) are well known in literary circles, and now it seems that it is to give a new recruit to the musical world in the person of a youthful composer". This was on the publication of HL's brother Peter's 'The Rosalind Waltz'.

August 30: News reached Sydney of a shooting at Grassmere, in the pastoral dispute. Billy McLean, after the PS Rodney arson in August according to this site (which calls him McClean).

September: Peter Lawson's the 'Rosalind Waltz' was first performed. He used the pen-name Bert Lawson and became a very popular composer of light music. The only copy of the sheet music is in the Mitchell Library. Henry Lawson now getting 12s 6d a column in Worker. It was played at Government House and at "Hilda Spong's benefit".

September: Mrs Annie Bright was first editor of the new literary monthly Cosmos (for "Austral" people) and also editor of the house journal of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, at  the northwest corner of Moore St (Martin Place) and Pitt St. She and her husband Charles were in favour of reform.

September: Mrs Annie Lane opened boarding house at 46 Newtown Rd. (? Souter says Mary Cameron invited Annie Lane and Mrs Bilby to live at the boarding house she lived in. This could be accurate, though.)

September: (Souter pp 120 ff) Gilbert Casey, who had been the main agitator of the final split between Lane's Royalists and the Rebels, arrived in Sydney. he had been sent by new Australia to take over, or at least to get to the NACSA money. He laid siege to the office in Elizabeth St, opposed by Walter Head, who soon was being sued by various members over claims regarding the trust account. In Balmain, 17 adults and children were living in three small rooms.
  Casey found only one Lane supporter in Adelaide, Max Lewin (tobacconist), but in Sydney only one seceder, Peter McNaught, who was very troubled by Lane's emergent religiosity.

After September: Mary Cameron, later Gilmore, introduced Henry Lawson and Brereton at her place at Enmore. Mrs Lane was there (she thought Henry Lawson a "waster" and warned Mary). Brereton later wrote, "[Mary] then tactfully waved us [Brereton and Lawson] into the street while the night was yet young. Of all the women I know there is none who better understands the nature of men" (Knocking Around, p5). As they walked in George St near the Quay, Henry Lawson said (in reply to Jack's enthusiasm for the socialist struggle) "I couldn't say it in public because my living depends partly on what I'm writing for the Worker newspaper; but you can take it from me, Jack, the Australian worker is a brute and nothing else." The two became close friends. Later JLG wrote that Henry Lawson was no reader and read Deadwood Dick pulp novels, but he couldn't have seen that Henry Lawson was reading classics, as his writing shows. He took Henry Lawson to Syd. Uni.; later they have a poetic duel in the Elector.

September 1: Dagworth Station shearing shed was burned down, with 140 sheep inside. The arsonist was probably Samuel 'Frenchy Hoffmeister.   More

September 1: "The first Chinese newspaper to appear in Australia was The Chinese Australian Herald (Guangyi huabao), launched in Sydney on 1 September 1894, after two years of preparation, by Sun Junchen and two Westerners, G.A. Down and J.A. Philip. Why Down and Philip entered into a joint venture with Sun Junchen to publish a Chinese newspaper remains a mystery .Perhaps it was a condition for newspaper registration at that time. The offices of the paper were located on the 3rd floor at 19 Hunter Street in Sydney. The paper was registered at the Sydney General Post Office and carried beneath its masthead the signature of approval: 'This newspaper has been approved for circulation under appropriate regulations of the Government of New South Wales, and is to be posted free of additional charges to any post office throughout the territory.'
  "Sun Junchen was born in 1868, and studied at an English language school before entering business in Sydney. It is unclear whether he actually edited the paper, or indeed whether his Chinese language skills were sufficient for the task, but we have to admire his energy and enthusiasm in providing this valued cultural service to his Overseas Chinese compatriots.
  "The Chinese Australian Herald was printed using neat and careful hand-written stencils over its first few years of publication. The first page was devoted to advertisements, with four big characters spelling out "The Chinese Australian Herald" down the left column, followed by the characters for the date in the Guangxu Reign Period (of the Qing Dynasty) with lunar and solar equivalents printed alongside one another. Subscription rates were given as 20 cents per issue, $4.40 for half a year and $8.00 for an annual subscription including postage within New South Wales (20 cents in Chinese was twopence in the colonial currency, $4.40 meant four shillings and four pence, and $8 was equivalent to eight shillings).
  "It seems likely that the Chinese Australian Herald enjoyed a good circulation, because in 1897 it adopted new movable-print technology."   Source

" ... the Tung Wah Times and the Chinese Australian Herald, were opposed to unionism and urged their readers 'to reject union practices and to vote for the conservatives in elections'."   Source  [NB, Tung Wah Herald commenced June 29, 1898]

September 3: Australian Workers' Union held a meeting at Protestant Hall, opposite McNamara's bookshop, to issue a statement. Worker publisher James A Ross chairman. J Medway Day was main speaker, reported from the police manual in Qld that they would fire on some protesters. Henry Lawson went to Mary Cameron's very upset about this. More of events at this time, Roderick, 1991, p. 118. Henry Lawson wrote 'The Dying Anarchist' and 'Board and Residence' round now; 'The Cant and Dirt of Labor Literature' attacked word 'scab' and although he was only trying to dignify the movement, workers were hostile to him. His Worker bosses noticed this and other similar." 

September 4: In New York City, 12,000 tailors went on strike against sweatshop working conditions.

September 8: Bulletin called the shearers' actions a "burlesque civil war" and said the leaders "have no idea whither they are going". Strikers' camps and pickets now from Menindee to Barcaldine.

September 8: Eighteen-year-old Washington Sorenson was one of the first seceders from New Australia to arrive back in Sydney, where he told the Evening News that he had had his 60 pounds worth of fun, and no regrets. 

September 15: The 'Society' column of the Bulletin reported: "Mrs Annie Besant, now in Melbourne, has come to Australia for the purpose of lecturing on Theosophy ... Mrs Besant's daughter, Mrs Besant-Scott, is married to a Melbourne pressman and is a clever young lady who has succeeded equally well as a cyclist and as spokeswoman of an adult-suffrage deputation to the Victorian Premier. ... Mrs Besant makes her clearest and brightest point in charging the church with having led man to believe that he is naturally a base animal – with having persistently cursed his fleshly lusts, and exhorted him to feel sorry for his disgraceful conduct, instead of teaching him to glory in his noble impulses. What has the brimstone shepherd to say to this?"

September 18: John Le Gay Brereton heard Annie Besant speak at the Opera House on 'The Dangers that Threaten Society'. (Roderick, 1991, p120) But this site says she was here in 1895. Check: "During a lecture tour to Australia in 1895, the same year as the initial atomic observations, she translated the Bhagavad Gita from Sanskrit, a language she had studied for less than two years."   Source

"Two things stand out. One is that New South Wales provided a better recruiting ground than Victoria or anywhere else in Australia. It seems as if a third of new recruits came from New South Wales in 1899, by 1919 nearly half (42 per cent), and by 1929 as much as 60 per cent. As most NSW theosophists belonged to the Sydney lodge, unlike Victoria where suburban and gold-town lodges were a recurrent ambition, the greater appeal in Sydney is marked. Second, and related, the success of the Sydney lodge was phenomenal. By the 1920s, with a reputed membership of up to 800, it was said to be the largest theosophical lodge in the world.

"Why Sydney, when in the 1880s Melbourne represented the best hope of spiritualist-cum-theosophic lecturers and theosophy found a platform in the Religious Science Club of the Australian Church? As late as 1893 Mrs Cooper-Oakley, one of Annie Besant's chillier lieutenants, spoke of psychic potential in Melbourne comparable only with the United States. But it was Sydney that the visiting PTS (President of The Theosophical Society), Col. Henry Steel Olcott, chose as headquarters of the newly chartered Australasian Section in 1891. And even though the section failed, it was effectively reorganised by Annie Besant in a triumphal lecture tour of the antipodes in 1894, with Sydney again headquarters. The first successful theosophical journal, The Austral Theosophist, was launched from Melbourne in 1894, edited by Ernest Besant-Scott, Annie's son-in-law, later Professor Ernest Scott, Australian historian; but it was transferred to Sydney in 1895 and became the Sectional journal thereafter.

"We may speculate that by the mid-1890s Sydney was a better material bet, though probably there were followers in Melbourne of comparable generosity to that of Sydney mainstay, stockbroker T.H. Martyn, who gave £30,000 over 30 years to the cause. No doubt theosophical leaders resident in Madras since 1882 preferred warmer climates, and indeed put their faith in tropical influences. More likely Olcott, a true Yankee, preferred a Pacific list towards a United States of Australasia; and there was a 'doctrinal' gloss. The theosophists were forerunners of the Pacific rim view. The lost continent of 'Lemuria', submerged beneath the Pacific according to Blavatsky, would yield up ancient truths; and the next evolutionary Round, with attendant religious advance, projected for the Pacific, had probably already begun on its eastern rim in Califomia (a common Utopian expectation then). The seaboard city of Sydney Already contained ardent Lemurians and one theosophical anthropologist, Dr Alan Carroll. These were the 'good men' chosen by Olcott to advance theosophy in Australia.

"Olcott found Sydney a congenial town. More, and more respectable, people paid attention to him. He dined with Lord and Lady Jersey in Government House on the basis of prior acquaintance during the Jerseys' term in India. His lectures were well attended and chaired by men of mark such as Edmund Barton, with Drs Garran and O'Neill on the platform; the audience comprised 'a number of ladies and gentlemen who sympathized with the aims of the Society'. These were, he said, to secure ‘libertv of thought and open up the sources of Eastern philosophy’ to enable 'man to stand out in all his majesty' and to help 'suffering humanity'. He did not attract press quibbles as in Melbourne, especially from the Age. No one in Melbourne responded to his appeal for funds for his Buddhist girls' school in Ceylon. However, Deakin did chair his lectures."   Source

September 29: Annie Besant continued her lecture tour in Sydney. Her first lecture was chaired by Judge Windeyer.

September 29: "LANE, with his ideals destroyed, his hopes blasted, and all his airy castles tumbled to the ground, is worth a whole shipload of the dogs who licked from his plate in his prosperous days, but who yelp at his heels now that he is discredited ... He gave up an assured literary success, and certain worldly reward, for his ideal. He has failed, because the day for crusaders has gone by, the age of chivalry is dead, and enterprises of that kind now attract only the cranks, the permanently dissatisfied, and the mentally unbalanced. A latter day DON QUIXOTE, LANE never allowed for the windmills (nor the windbags) and even his Sancho Panzas were humbugs always prepared to steal his kingdom and his brains. Future generations will regard Lane as an heroic figure in an unheroic age, and history will forgive him for what he failed to do, and remember that he tried." JD Fitzgerald; letter to The Bulletin, September 29, 1894

October: Harry Holland and Tom 'the Vag' Batho, began the Socialist newspaper. Holland had lost his job this year on Australian Workman. Most ASL members liked it for its critical approach to the Labor Party. It was published in Leichhardt; they carried 60lb formes to Newtown, and back with the edition. In about June, 1896, Holland was charged with defaming Joseph Creer, director of the State Labour Bureau, and did 3 months (released November). They packed up and in 1897 published from Newcastle as Socialist Journal of the Northern People, under great hardship from lack of capital (they only had 6d). By May, 1897 it was the largest-selling miners' paper.

October: Southport, Tasmania: 20 families took up residence at an intentional community.

October 6: HL's 'The Cant and Dirt of Labour Literature' published in Worker. Henry Lawson attacked the use of the "ignorant, cowardly and brutal" use of the word 'scab'. He then went on: "... That egotistic word 'mateship' – which was born of New Australian imagination, and gushed about to a sickening extent – implied a state of things which never existed any more than the glorious old unionism which was going to bear us on to freedom on one wave. The one was altogether too glorious, and the other too angelistic to exist among mortals. We must look at the nasty side of truth as well as the other, the conceited side. When our ideal 'mateship' is realised, the monopolists will not be able to hold the land from us."

November 12: Lawrence Hargrave linked four of his box kites together, added a sling seat, and flew 16 feet.

November (second week): With lawsuits coming from all directions, Walter Head set out for Melbourne, where his family had been since the loss of his son, and was heard of no more by NACSA (he settled in Tasmania under the name Walter Alan Woods, which he used till his death at 78). WG Spence said that only he and Mary Cameron knew where he was. Head might have been found liable for the trust fund, and stood to do 15 years in prison. Son, however, Gilbert Casey was (with Rose Summerfield's help) circulating the rumour that Head had recently fathered an illegitimate child to the sister of Jim Mooney, one of the NACSA men. "Woods" edited the labour journal Clipper, was a founder of the Tasmanian Labour Party, a member of the Tasmanian House of Assembly for seventeen years, and was Speaker of that House twice. Soon, Tom Hicks-Hall (Tom Hall) and Alec Forrester took the books from the NACSA safe and destoyed them dropping the pages in the harbour from the North Shore ferry at night, to hide that NACSA had advanced them money, according to Mary Gilmore (1939, letter to Walter Head's daughter).

November 18: 'Thin Lips and False Teeth' appeared in Worker. 'Remailed' soon after. 

November 20: Brereton (pseudonym XXX), in Hermes, student journal of Sydney University, did a rave review of Henry Lawson just before publication of Short Stories in Prose and Verse. It was to promo HL's first book, pub. December 22.

November 26: John Norton in Newtown Police Court for sex with 15-year-old Elizabeth Summers. He consented to an order of 5 shillings a week.

November 30: "Sydney staged the world's first 'movie' projection in November 1894, a good 12-months before the Lumiere Brothers in Paris. Screened in a converted shop on Pitt Street, the 35 millimetre film ran at 40 images per second and was projected through a machine known as a kinetoscope. In the first five weeks of showing, there were 22,000 moviegoers – each paying a shilling each."   Source

December: Daniel Lehane Willis announced that the "late proprietary" had sold Truth to AG Taylor and AA Thomson.

December: JA Andrews "was arrested in December and jailed on 21 February 1895 for 5 months after spending 2 months in jail waiting for trial."   Source

December 3: Death of Robert Louis Stevenson (b. 1850).

December 8: Article 'The City and the Bush', by HL, published in Worker. It took a swipe at bad treatment of new-chum jackaroos by experienced bushmen, and "bush-union egotism and clannishness".

December 18: Women in South Australia become the first in Australia to gain the right to vote and to be elected to Parliament.

December 22: Louisa Lawson published on The Dawn's press her 27-year-old son’s first book, Short Stories in Prose and Verse. Printed at her office at 26 Jamison St, but 402 George St given as the address of the publisher, L. Lawson. A pale green paperback. A gust of wind some of the edition into York St, which had recently been watered. Louisa printed 1,000; she took 500 to sell in Dawn at 1s 3d a copy (she never managed to sell all). The remainder were for Lawson to sell through Worker (which disposed of them easily) On the way to the Public Library with two copies to give, Henry Lawson bumped into John Le Gay Brereton and gave him one copy. Henry Lawson was exultant, and also mentioned that his mother was a "the hardest business man I've ever met". Henry Lawson gave a review copy to AG Stephens (he was repelled by the bad printing, but impressed and reviewed it January 5, 1895). JF Archibald loved 'In the Days When the World Was Wide' and put it in the Xmas edition of The Bulletin.

In the preface to his Short Stories in Prose and Verse Henry Lawson wrote: 

"This is an attempt to publish, in Australia, a collection of sketches and stories at a time when everything Australian, in the shape of a book, must bear the imprint of a London publishing firm before our critics will condescend to notice it, and before the 'reading public' will think it worth its while to buy nearly so many copies as will pay for the mere cost of printing a presentable volume … This pamphlet – I can scarcely call it a volume – contains some of my earliest efforts, and they are sufficiently crude and faulty. They have been collected and printed hurriedly … and without experienced editorial assistance, which last, I begin to think, was sadly necessary. However, we all hope to do better in the future."

"It is Louisa's idea to publish a collection of Henry's poems and stories; and with characteristic drive she organizes everyone, not least of all Henry, to the task. Inexperience and bad luck subvert the enterprise: the lack of professional editorial expertise is only too evident. Like her son, Louisa is philosophical and hopes for better things to come:

“'I was seriously trying to decide wether [sic) life was worth living and I cheerfully concluded that perhaps after all it was. I fear that I got more kicks than halfpence all round for my blundering venture … but I [look forward to] greater more perfect and I hope more profitable undertakings.'

"She is exhausted and depressed by the effort, and the insistence with which she overwhelmed Henry into according with the enterprise is now turned back on her as the book begins its long career as 'an oddity of printing'. Yet she is, as so often, ahead of her times, out beyond the front line of prevailing tastes and critical opinion: Short Stories in Prose and Verse, scrappily presented, indifferently printed and, in quality, radically uneven, is a pivotal and revolutionary book in Australian literature and contains, in 'The Drover's Wife', one of the great short stories in that or any literature. Louisa glimpses this, though she is to lose sight of it again, along with everyone else, when the book's technical shortcomings become its major talking point."
Matthews, Brian, Louisa, McPhee Gribble, Melbourne, 1987

Henry Lawson poems in 1894

The Windy Hills o' Wellington
"The Home of the Gods"
Rewi to Grey
The Latter End of Spring
To Tom Bracken
Australian Bards and Bush Reviewers
In the Days When the World Was Wide
Beautiful Maoriland
Martin Farrell
O'Hara, J.P.
Republican Pioneers
In the Street
Charley Turner
Old Joe Swallow
Marshall's Mate
I'll Tell You What, You Wanderers

Lawsons chronology up to 1889 and Henry Lawson news  

Lawsons chronology 1890-1894  Lawson chronology 1895-1899  

Lawsons chronology 1900-1909  Lawsons chronology 1910 and on

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