Labour Australia

Jack Curran, 1908

Western Mail, 22 August 1908, p 25

John James (Jack) Curran (1876-1967) bootmaker, clerk, trade union official, Labor supporter 

Birth: 25 February 1876 at Sydney, New South Wales, son of Thomas William Curran, farmer, and Margaret, née Whitely. Marriages: (1) 15 February 1905 at St Andrew’s Presbyterian church, in Perth, Western Australia, to Amelia May Ohrt (1883-1971). They one daughter (divorced in Sydney in September 1935). (2) 1935 at Woollahra, NSW, to native-born Mary Eileen Hudson (1899-1971). Death: 11 October 1967 in hospital at Lidcombe, Sydney, New South Wales. Religion: buried with Anglican rites. 

• Brought up Belgravia, near Orange, in central west NSW from the age of three. Educated at local public schools.
• Rejecting father’s aspiration that he join the public service, he left home at a young age to join a shearers’ camp. Follows the ‘90 industrial war’, and, aged 14, was ‘out on strike’.
• Returned home to Orange and served apprenticeship as bootmaker in Orange.
• Aged 21 went to Melbourne as journeyman. Within 12 months was elected vice-president of Victorian Operative Bootmakers’ Union. Elected President, 1898.
• Left Victoria for Western Australia about 1900-01. Elected Secretary of Coastal Operative Bootmakers (Perth) in 1901, Secretary of 8 Hours Committee 1900–1903. Secretary of Coastal Trades and Labour Council, 1904-1907 — attacked management and decisions of local arbitration court. Appointed Justice of the Peace.
• Treasurer and director of publishing company controlling The Democrat (1904-05). Resigned as Secretary of Coastal TLC in June 1907 engaging in bitter dispute re payment of wages. About 1907 he became secretary of Metropolitan Sewerage Employees’ Union.
• Australian Labor Party candidate, two seats in WA Legislative Assembly, East Perth, 1904, by-election and East Perth 1908, general election.
• By 1929 he was living in Sydney. Was a bootmaker and shoe shop proprietor, then a clerk until he retired.
• Cause of death: pulmonary oedema, cardiac failure, arteriosclerotic heart diease, fibrillation and arterial embolus.

Sources
David Black, Index to Parliamentary candidates in W.A. Elections 1890-1989 (Perth, 1991); D. J. Murphy, (ed), Labor in Politics: State Labor Parties in Australia, 1880-1920 (St Lucia, Qld, 1975); Marriage Certificate, Perth 1228/1905; photo and biography, Democrat (Perth), 13 August 1904, p 3; Morning Herald, 22 May 1907; West Australian (Perth), 20 July 1904, p 8 [https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/25093801]; Metropolitan Sewerage Employees’ Union records; WA Post Office Directory 1907, p. 1050.