By Lyn Collingwood, Bulletin 3/2025, May

In 1917 a strike involving more than 76,000 workers crippled transport and other industries. The dispute began with the introduction of a card system to record work times and output in the Randwick tramway workshops, a move interpreted by the Amalgamated Society of Engineers as time-and-motion ‘speed up’. Other unionists joined the rail and tramway strikers. Jim Haslam of 4 Junction Street, Forest Lodge, proclaimed his support in verse. He was a quarryman. Those working with stone were traditionally strong unionists; a Stonemasons’ Society had been founded in NSW as early as 1853.


Poem, ‘Random lines’, by James Haslam, written in 1917 (Source: National Library of Australia)

Jim and his younger brother Samuel were the sons of James Haslam and Maria, born Downey, who married at Bathurst in 1858. A native of Tipperary, Maria had arrived in Sydney four years earlier as a 16-year-old aboard the immigrant ship Caroline. James senior was reputedly descended from Samuel Haslam who had been transported to the colony in 1798 for sheep stealing. On completing his sentence, he was granted land and a licence to sell beer in the Parramatta district where a local tributary took his name. Haslam’s Creek railway station was opened in 1858 and Haslam’s Creek Cemetery in 1867. Pressure from local residents led to the graveyard’s renaming as Rookwood, while the station became Lidcombe. Today’s Haslem [sic] Drive is a reminder of Rookwood Cemetery’s origins.

The Haslam brothers remained close. In 1894 Samuel, then living in Campbell Street Glebe, was labouring on the Marrickville sewer when he suffered a fractured skull after being struck by falling timber. He was treated at RPA Hospital and sent home. The same year, he married Elizabeth Hegarty at Glebe. In 1896 his brother married Emily Richardson. The couples shared a house in Nelson Street Annandale before settling in Forest Lodge or Glebe where they lived for the rest of their lives, moving from one rented property to another.

Born to James and Emily were William Henry (1897–1975), Emily (born and died in 1901), Walter John (1903–1964) and Cordelia Agnes (1905–1976). In 1916 William enlisted in the infantry as a driver, was gassed in France, married seamstress Alice Agnes Wright in London, and after returning to Australia settled at Granville as a dairyman. Walter became a canister maker. Cordelia, a stenographer, married merchant navy officer William Edward Hardman who sued for divorce on the grounds of desertion when his wife of six years refused to continue living with him in Western Australia. Cordelia returned to Sydney and did not remarry.

Maria Haslam lived with her elder son and his family at 8 Cross Street, 232 St Johns Road and 4 Junction Street, the address at the time of her death in 1915. James and his family were afterwards at 217 St Johns Road and 5 Upper Road where James, a pensioner, died on 30 June 1936. He was buried in the Catholic section of Rookwood Cemetery.

Born to Samuel and Elizabeth were Samuel (1895–1896), William (born and died in 1897), Mary Kate (1897–1946) and John Joseph (1901–1974). Mary, who married Jack Bourke in 1922, died at Newtown.

Samuel Haslam lived with his family at various addresses in Hereford Street between 1908 and 1922: numbers 80, 36, 118 and 160. Aged 59, he died at the last address on 10 September 1922. His widow, then living at 132 Hereford Street, died at age 67 on 16 August 1932. After a service at St James Catholic Church, Forest Lodge, the funeral proceeded to the Catholic cemetery at Rookwood, the final resting place of her husband, mother-in-law and brother-in-law.

Sources: Australian Encyclopaedia; NSW cemetery records; NSW electoral rolls; NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages; Trove.nla.gov.au website.