By Lyn Collingwood, Bulletin 2024/9 November

Staunch trade unionist Margaret Colbourne, née Margaretta Mitchell, lived and worked in Glebe all her married life. Her father was James Walter Mitchell, an Irish immigrant from Market Hill near Belfast. In Sydney, he combined his trade as a letter-press machine printer with that of publican. Nothing is known of her mother, Jane.

When Margaret was born, James Mitchell was the landlord of the Kangaroo Inn in Yurong Street Woolloomooloo. As was common, the hotel was also the family home. In 1869 James was fined for selling liquor outside hours, and in June the following year he was declared insolvent, by which time he had taken over the licence of the Bengal Arms in Bridge Street. Mitchell died there four months later at the age of 52 and was buried Church of England in Balmain Cemetery, the resting place of his daughter Edith Minnie, who had died in 1869 at the age of two. 

Margaret was a dye finisher when she married Queensland-born painter Robert Colbourn (1866–1918) at St David’s Anglican Church, Surry Hills, on 30 April 1894. The couple moved to Glebe where six children were born: Robert James (1895–1947), Reginald Samuel (1897–1938), James (1899–1900), Marguerite (born and died in 1901), Colin Campbell (1902–1979) and Bruce Douglas (1904–1948). The family first lived at 36 Gottenham Street (cornering Bridge Road) and 6 Brougham Street before shifting to Norton Street. By 1908, the street numbering now fixed, they had settled at 8 Gottenham Street, their address for the next two decades. The spelling of their surname changed over time.

The four surviving sons became manual labourers. Two served in the First World War. Robert, a boilermaker at Cockatoo Island – and subject to a recent Children’s Court maintenance order –  was the first to enlist in 1915. His mother organised a farewell for him in Glebe’s Record Reign Hall. Reginald, a storeman, enlisted in May 1916. He fought in France as a gunner and his name was one of those inscribed on a roll of honour at the Randwick Tramway Workshops. After returning to civilian life, Reg became a fitter. 

Robert Colbourne senior (a 51-year-old ‘age pensioner’) died on 13 July 1918 while Reg was still overseas. Margaret Colbourne’s brother James Walter Mitchell junior, a commission agent nicknamed ‘Paddy’, died aged 54 the following March. He and his family were also long-term Glebe residents; their family home was 122 Bridge Road. Paddy’s widow, Annie Charlotte née Veness, survived until 1931. 

Soon after her husband’s health began to fail in 1909, Margaret got a job as a cleaner at Glebe Public School. For more than two decades, she looked after the outhouses and sheds and the main buildings, which had three flights of stairs. In the early days, the ‘workers of the dawn’ provided their own materials, scrubbed by candlelight and brought their young children to help. Margaret was a founding member of the school’s Parents and Citizens’ Association and a leading activist in the School Cleaners’ Union with the Education Department.

In 1911, Margaret joined the Miscellaneous Workers Union (MWU) as a pioneer member and its ninth female. She served on the MWU Board of Management for 20 years, was regularly elected as MWU delegate to the NSW Labor Council and represented the union at public events such as Labor politicians’ funerals. She was involved with the Trades Hall Association and the Eight Hour Committee, was nominated at least once by the MWU as the Eight Hour Day’s ‘Labor Queen’ and won the union movement’s ‘Most Popular Lady’ competition. 

In 1923, Margaret was appointed one of the State’s first female Justices of the Peace. The position was not without its downside: ‘I’ve had people waking me up at two in the morning to sign a consent for a son or daughter to be married,’ she recalled in 1946. ‘Then there’s the person who wakes up in the middle of the night and decides to change his will. He thinks nothing of getting a JP out of bed to witness it … What I would like to do is sit on the Bench’. 

Margaret was active on the right wing of the ALP, which she joined in 1906. During the 1920s and 1930s she was treasurer and on the credentials committee of the Glebe branch, which met at Glebe Town Hall and at the RSL Labor Club at 49 Glebe Point Road (now Gleebooks). She supported Jack Lang’s ‘inner group’, particularly the Member for West Sydney, John Beasley, nicknamed ‘Stabber Jack’ for leading his group across the floor of the House to bring down the Scullin government in 1931. A regular contributor to the Labor Daily on workers’ rights and the perks enjoyed by non-Labor politicians, Margaret repeatedly urged voters to elect Beasley. During the Depression, she argued against the Education Department employing married female teachers. They should be replaced by young people whose mothers supported Jack Lang and an ALP Government. 

By 1930, Margaret had moved with her younger sons Colin and Bruce, both boilermakers, into Crusa Flats at 413 Glebe Point Road. The newly built block on the corner of Cook Street had replaced the demolished Tiverton and its stables and coach-house. After Margaret was elected treasurer of the ALP’s Toxteth branch, established in October 1940, her flat was used for occasional political meetings. The branch’s early years were marked by increasing factionalism, heated debates over wartime conscription and anger over Jack Lang’s expulsion from the Labor Party. 

The ‘little grandmother of the Labor movement’ remained at 413 Glebe Point Road until her death at age 79 on 29 November 1948 at RPA Hospital. She was buried Anglican near other family members at Rookwood. Representatives of the MWU attended the funeral. She was survived by her third son Colin, a Glebe alderman who worked at the Rozelle railway yards. Robert, her eldest, had died in April 1947; Bruce, her youngest, in March 1948. Reg had died a decade earlier. Probate on her estate was not finalised until 1952. 

Margaret Colbourne is commemorated by Colbourne Avenue (previously part of Brougham Street), off St Johns Road. Another female stalwart of the Toxteth branch of the ALP is acknowledged by the Alice Lee Reserve on Burton Street. Nearby are the Ernest Pedersen Steps and the Ernest Pedersen Reserve, named for ‘Ernie’ Pedersen, strong man of the ALP’s Toxteth branch.

Sources: City of Sydney: Sydney streets; Michael Hogan, Local Labor: a history of the Labor Party in Glebe, 1891-2003; National Archives of Australia; NSW cemetery records; NSW electoral rolls; NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages; NSW State Records; People Australia; Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages; Sands Directories; Sydney’s Aldermen website; Trove website. 

Notes for the family historian: Buried Church of England at Rookwood are: Robert Colbourne and two infant children, the tombstone ‘erected by his wife’. Buried Anglican at Rookwood, the inscription ‘From Red’: Reg Samuel 17 December 1938, aged 40; Bruce Douglas 27 March 1948, aged 43; Winifred <Teresa> 19 December 1953 and her husband Colin Campbell 21 December 1979, aged 77. Robert James who died aged 53 in 1947, survived by his widow and four children, was cremated at Rookwood.