An Autobiography [a photocopied unpublished duplicate typescript]

WHITFORD, Hon. Stanley R.

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Quarto, two volumes of photocopied duplicate typescript (the original containing numerous manuscript addenda and corrigenda), [ii], vi, 405 and [ii], 406-890 pages (all printed rectos only). Binder's cloth lettered in gilt on the spine ('An Autobiography | Burra & Moonta Mines | Whitford | Part 1' and '. Part 2'); cloth a little sunned (mainly on the spines); in excellent condition. Stanley R. Whitford (1878-1959), was a South Australian trade unionist and Labor politician. His short entry in the 'Australian dictionary of Biography' states that 'he spent his last eleven years bed-ridden in hospital where he wrote his unpublished autobiography'. The following chunk of information from the ADB is a taste of what to expect from this item: Whitford 'was born on 5 June 1878 at Moonta, South Australia, youngest child of Richard Whitford, a miner from Devonshire, and his Cornish wife Emma, late Prior, née Matthews. Stanley attended local primary schools, then was employed for seven years by a blacksmith. In 1898 he attended night-classes at the Moonta School of Mines and learned mine surveying on Saturdays. He worked on the Western Australian goldfields in 1899-1908 and next at Wallaroo, near Moonta. Having been a navvy, in 1909 he joined the South Australian Railways as a porter. On 1 October 1910 in the Methodist Church, North Adelaide, he married Edith Thyra Dixon, a schoolteacher. Stan, as he preferred to be called, kept his Cornish accent. He became an organizer and secretary of the Australian Railways Union and, later, the Australian Workers' Union. His reading included the work of Henry George, Tom Paine and Karl Marx. After opposing conscription in World War I, as a Labor candidate he unsuccessfully contested the Federal seats of Barker (1917) and Boothby (1919); he was president of the State branch of the Australian Labor Party in 1919-20. Whitford was defeated for the House of Assembly seat of Victoria in 1918, but won North Adelaide in 1921. A Freemason, he was a member of the Adelaide City Council (1922-24), a delegate to the South Australian Football League and president (1923-24) of the Workers' Educational Association. Losing his parliamentary seat in 1927, he became a clerk on the wharfs before Sir Wallace Bruce, a businessman and a leading conservative, gave him a job in the Adelaide Cement Co., a house and gifts of money. In 1929-41 Whitford was a Labor member for Central in the Legislative Council where he was briefly minister of immigration, repatriation and irrigation in 1930, minister of agriculture and commissioner of forest lands in 1930-33, and chief secretary from October 1930 to April 1933. He was almost surprised to find "that zig-zagging through the State by bike, coach and train, I became Chief Secretary and Acting Treasurer"'. For the record, the typescript actually states 'Zig-zagging through the State by push bike, coach and train, I became Chief Secretary and Acting Premier and Treasurer in the Hill administration'. Seller Inventory # 124290

Bibliographic Details

Title: An Autobiography [a photocopied unpublished ...
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition.