Lot 708

Description

Political, gilt medalet (23mm), 'Vote for Hollis' (c1914); tin badge (23mm), 'Vote 6 Victoria's Referendum'; patriotic badge in gilt and enamel, Advance Australia Coat of Arms voided; Johns and Skinner reverse blank in bronze (20mm). Very fine - good extremely fine. (4)

Robert Hollis was born on 14 January 1851 at Field Head, Belper, Derbyshire, England. After working for about 20 years with the Midland Railway Co. and being involved in various political and social movements, he became disenchanted with the whole system and decided to move to Australia arriving in New South Wales in 1884. He joined the Department of Railways in January 1885 as a fireman and soon was heavily involved in the trade union movement. The depression of the 1890s and the merciless anti-unionism of Chief Commissioner E. M. G. Eddy resulted in Hollis's resignation from the railways in 1893. He then turned to politics as a means for restoring the industrial gains made by unions in the late 1880s. He was prominent in organizing the first Labor League at Newtown, Sydney and after several attempts he won the State seat of Newtown-Erskine, an inner suburban working-class electorate, for Labor in 1901. In 1916 he supported conscription in defiance of his electorate and as a result he was expelled from the Political Labor League in November 1916. In the March 1917 election, Hollis, stood as a Nationalist and was defeated. He then devoted himself to benevolent work and was a director of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital for the period 1913-33. He died in the Masonic Hospital, Ashfield, on 25 May 1937 and was buried in Rookwood Cemetery.

Johns and Skinner, possibly the firm of Johns and Skinner, bus proprietors, Carrington, Newcastle, NSW, 1920s.