Obituaries Australia

The ranks of the real orginators of the Australian political Labor movement, which had its genesis in the Maritime Strike of 1890, are gradually reaching extinction. Mr. Con [John Cornelius] Lindsay, who died at Heidelberg on May 25, after a long illness, was a pioneer in this phase of Australia's history.

Born in Canada in 1864, Mr. Lindsay arrived in Victoria with his parents at an early age, but after a few years was taken to India, where he was educated. He subsequently travelled extensively in the East. Returning to Australia in the middle eighties of the last century, he became attached to the Melbourne press.

In 1890 he went to Sydney and entered into the Labor agitation of that time. He became a delegate on the Sydney Trades and Labor Council, and was largely instrumental in forming branches of the Labor Electoral Leagues which were the predecessors in New South Wales of the present branches of the Australian Labor Party.

At the N.S.W. general election in 1891 Labor asserted itself as a political power. It obtained over 30 seats in the N.S.W. Legislative Assembly. Never desirous of seeking the easily secured, Con contested Molong, then an electorate in which the Labor policy was either unknown or detested. His principal opponent was the retiring member, a well-liked doctor who had known many of the electors since the dates of their births and who had enjoyed a long friendship with their parents.

There were three candidates. Mr. Lindsay ran a creditable second. That was his only attempt to enter Parliament. The election in which Con was engaged was one of the last in which the hustings were used. On the day of the nominations the candidates addressed the electors from the hustings which were usually erected in the court house yards of the chief polling places in the electorate.

That nomination day was not without incident. All elections were not then held on the same day. The third candidate, after having been beaten previously for another electorate by Joseph Cook, Australia's first Parliamentary Labor renegade, abused Con personally and accused him of disseminating revolution, but was quietened when Con asked the returning officer to make a note of his statements.

Early in this century, Mr. Lindsay went to New Zealand, where he did newspaper work for several years. Since 1926 he resided in Melbourne. Age did not dim his adherence to Labor. His last literary employment was on the magazine "Bohemia," whose pages were adorned by his contributions.

Mr. Lindsay was buried privately at Melbourne, last week.