Ill feeling toward the Broken Hill Proprietary Company ran high during the days when workers were locked out from the field. Since the NSW Arbitration Act of 1901, all negotiations had to be through the Courts. The following year BHP cut wages by 10% and two thousand miners left for other fields. In 1903, Justice Cohen refused to vary the 1893 agreement, freezing wages and introducing two-week contracts for underground workers. The town population dropped by 5,000 people. In 1906, the AMA elected by secret ballot to negotiate directly with Mr G.D. Delprat, General Manager of BHP. He attended the Trades Hall as a ‘private citizen’ and as a result the MMA and AMA agreed on the first wage rise in 13 years1. The 12.5% lead bonus would be paid until December 1908. By then the mineral prices had again plummeted and John Darling, the new head of BHP, refused to honour the previous agreement and withdrew from Arbitration. The miners regarded the dispute as a ‘Lock Out’, the MMA regarded it as a strike.
The startling effigy of John Darling of the Broken Hill Propriety Company was not a first for the mining field. In the drought of 1888, only 9ml of rain fell across the district. Stephen’s Creek reservoir, the main source of water for the mines and townsfolk, dried up. In one ten day period there were forty seven cases of typhoid and enteric fever caused by drinking impure water from dams, wells and soaks. In September, the Minister for Mines, Mr Francis Abigail was charged with ‘criminal and cruel neglect of the inhabitants’ when he refused water to be taken from the Government owned Rat Hole Tank at Silverton.
At four o’clock a hearse drawn by six horses and bearing the words “We will have Water”, paraded along Argent Street. It was led by a brass band playing the ‘Dead March’ and followed by a watercart, drawn by a dozen donkeys, bearing the sign ‘Empty’. It made its way past the overcrowded balcony of Aldridge’s Grand Hotel, and climbed the rise to the Central Reserve on Sulphide Street. Over six thousand people, gathered around a timber scaffold.
‘On the top there were several townsmen including Messrs. McCarthy and Edwards, Solicitors, and Mr Chapple … in their midst there was a splendid effigy of Mr. Abigail, seated in a black coffin with a rope around his neck and an empty waterbag in his hand…the effigy was saturated with kerosene, lighted and hoisted on the gallows. The noise made by the mob as the flames spread over the body was deafening. The effigy had been crammed full of fireworks of various descriptions, which exploded as the fire spread.’2
Mr Abigail rescinded his decision and water was transported from Silverton by train, then distributed by water carts across the town. This type of effective street theatre continued throughout the next three decades of industrial action.
For more info etc – LINK TO THE MOCK GRAVES ETC
- ‘The Water Famine at Broken Hill’, Illustrated Sydney News, 26 October, 1888.
- Kearns, R.H.B (2003) Broken Hill 1883-1893: Discovery and development, Broken Hill: Broken Hill Historical Society, p.25&29.
