John Joseph Ambrose Curtin (1885 - 1945)

Born 8 Jan 1885 in Creswick, Colony of Victoria

Ancestors

Husband of Elsie (Needham) Curtin — married 21 Apr 1917 (to 5 Jul 1945) in Perth, Western Australia, Australia

Died 5 Jul 1945 at age 60 in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

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Biography

John Curtin is Notable.

John Joseph Ambrose Curtin was an Australian politician who was the 14th Prime Minister of Australia from 1941 to 1945 and the Leader of the Labor Party from 1935 to 1945.^[1][2]
He is widely regarded as one of Australia's greatest Prime Ministers.^[3]

Early Life

Curtin was born in 1885 of Irish immigrant parents, John Curtin and Catherine Bourke, in the former gold mining town of Creswick en.wikipedia.org, in west-central Victoria.^[4] His father worked as a warder at Pentridge Gaol, served as a soldier, was a policeman at Creswick, then was employed in hotels, sometimes as manager, in Melbourne en.wikipedia.org and at Dromana en.wikipedia.org, Charlton en.wikipedia.org, Macedon en.wikipedia.org and elsewhere. His chronic illness eventually forced the family, which included four children, to settle, in poverty, at Brunswick en.wikipedia.org.^[5]

John Curtin in 1908

Curtin began his education at St Francis' Boys School, a Christian Brothers school attached to St Francis' Church en.wikipedia.org in Melbourne. His other schools included St Bridget's School in Fitzroy, Macedon Primary School in Macedon, and various local state schools where his frequently moving family resided at the time, before his formal education ended at age 13.^[6][7]
As a youth Curtin was a keen sportsman, playing football for the Brunswick Football Club, and also cricket for the Brunswick Cricket Club. He remained involved with both sports for the rest of his life and was said to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of cricket statistics.^[8]
After leaving school Curtin had a number of short term jobs with various publications, including radical and socialist newspapers, until he was engaged as an estimates clerk with the Titan Manufacturing Company in South Melbourne in 1903.^[5][6][7]

Labour Movement

Curtin also became involved with the labour movement at a young age. From 1911 to 1915 he was employed as the state secretary of the Timberworkers' Union and was elected its federal president in 1914. He was also an organiser of the Australian Workers Union in 1916. Curtin took an anti-conscriptionist stance during World War I and was imprisoned briefly in December 1916 for refusing to attend a compulsory medical examination.^[3]He also stood unsuccessfully as the Labor en.wikipedia.org candidate for Balaclava en.wikipedia.org in the 1914 federal election.^[9]
In 1917 Curtin moved to Perth, Western Australia en.wikipedia.org, to become an editor for the Westralian Worker, the official trade union newspaper.^[3]
He joined the Australian Journalists' Association en.wikipedia.org in 1917 and was its Western Australian President in 1920.^[10]
In addition to his stance on labour rights Curtin was also a strong advocate for the rights of women and children, and was a member of the Federal Government's Royal Commission on Child Endowment in 1927.^[11]

Marriage and Family

John Curtin's house in Jarrad Street, Cottesloe

In 1917 Curtin married Elsie Needham in Leederville en.wikipedia.org, Western Australia, after a two year engagement.^[5][12]
A columnist at Perth's Sunday Times reported that, as the editor of the Worker at the time, Curtin quietly returned to his office on the Monday following the wedding and resumed his exhilarating task of scarifying the loathsome capitalist.^[13]
The couple had two children; a daughter Elsie born at the end of 1917 and a son, John, born in 1921. The family lived in the Perth suburb of Cottesloe en.wikipedia.org, in a home that is now heritage-listed as John Curtin's house.^[14]
Curtin enjoyed family life and living in Perth and was well liked for his kindness and tolerance.^[5]Curtin drank alcohol heavily in his early years and some authors have maintained that he had further drinking problems later in life.^[5]
This has been strenuously denied by his daughter, who maintains he gave up drinking in 1931.^[15]

Political Career

Curtin was elected to Federal Parliament for the seat of Fremantle (Western Australia) en.wikipedia.org in 1928, lost in 1931 and returned in 1935, after which he became Labor Party Leader following the resignation of James Scullin.^[7]
On 7 October 1941 Curtin was sworn in as Prime Minister after Arthur Fadden's coalition government lost majority support in the House of Representatives en.wikipedia.org.^[16]
This was just eight weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Statue of John Curtin, Fremantle, Western Australia

Fear was riding high in Australia that the nation was underresourced should there be a major invasion. In November 1941 the cruiser HMAS Sydney was lost off the north-west coast of Australia following a battle with the German raider HSK Kormoran.^[17]
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on 7 December 1941, which immediately led the United States and Great Britain to declare war on Japan.^[18]
The next day Australia declared war on Japan, the first declaration of war Australia had ever made independently of Britain.^[19]
Curtin had campaigned during the 1940 election that the ‘primary responsibility of any Australian Government was to ensure the security and integrity of its own soil and people before contributing to a common cause’.^[19]
In his New Year’s message delivered on the radio on 26 December 1941 and published in the Melbourne Herald the next day, Curtin announced that: "Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom."
This decisive move away from Great Britain infuriated British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.^[19]
Curtin showed he was a strong and resourceful leader and his achievements as Prime Minister were shaped by the war. He placed United States General Douglas MacArthur in charge of Australian defence forces in the Pacific. He also rejected Britain's strategy for deploying Australian troops and recalled Australian troops, thus enabling the successful defence of New Guinea. Although he had strongly opposed conscription in World War I, in World War II he made the decision to send conscripted troops to serve outside of Australia, although still within the Australian region.^[20]
Curtin drew out a nationwide war effort, which resulted in a rapid adaptation of Australia's primary and secondary industry to defence and wartime production, and put in place measures for postwar reconstruction, including full employment. He vowed that the armed forces and workers and their 'kith and kin' would be adequately compensated for their contribution to the war effort. Legislative changes to enable this included:

• The Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942 necessary to give Australia full competence to pass laws relating to its independence as a nation.
• The Black Marketing Act 1942 to protect war-time price control and rationing.
• Changes to the taxation system that allowed the federal government to fund major projects in the post war era, such as the Snowy Mountains Scheme.
• The introduction of a Widows Pension to ensure that loss of a husband and father did not lead to women and children becoming destitute.
• Unemployment and Sickness Benefits Scheme introduced to prevent the suffering that many experienced during the previous Depressions in Curtin's lifetime.
• The Pharmaceutical Benefits Act 1944 and 1945 provided for the Commonwealth to subsidise range of medicines.^[7]
  

Death and Burial

Curtin grave at Karrakatta Cemetery

Curtin died at The Lodge in Canberra en.wikipedia.org on 5th July 1945, only one month before the end of the war. He died from ‘war-weariness’, over-exertion, stress and heart disease, was the second Australian Prime Minister to die in office.^[7][21]
Following a State funeral attended by large crowds, first in Canberra and then Perth, Curtin's body was interred in the Karrakatta Cemetery, Karrakatta, Western Australia.^{[22][23][24][25]}
On his tombstone reads:^[26]

"His country was his pride

His brother man his cause."

See Also

^[27]

• Wikidata: Item Q23375
• Visit: Western Australia Divisions - Profile Tree
  

Sources

1. ↑ About John Curtin (National Archives of Australia, naa.gov.au accessed 24 Sep 2021)
2. ↑ John Curtin. Fact Facts. (National Archives of Australia, naa.gov.au accessed 24 Sep 2021)
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2} Black, David. Biography of John Curtin. (Curtin University, jcpml.curtin.edu.au accessed 24 Sep 2021)
4. ↑ Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages, Victoria. Online index - Birth bdm.vic.gov.au accessed 14 September 2021) index entry for John Curtin (Birthplace: Creswick, Victoria, Father: John Curtin, Mother: Kate Bourke, Registration Number: 2009/1885)
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4} Geoffrey Serle, 'Curtin, John (1885–1945)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, adb.anu.edu.au published first in hardcopy 1993, accessed online 14 September 2021
6. ↑ ^{6.0 6.1} Wikipedia contributors, "John Curtin," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, en.wikipedia.org (accessed September 14, 2021).
7. ↑ ^{7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4} John Curtin (National Museum Australia, nma.gov.au accessed 24 Sep 2021)
8. ↑ A Fine Innings. (Curtin University Blog, john.curtin.edu.au accessed 14 Sep 2021)
9. ↑ John Curtin (Curtin University, john.curtin.edu.au accessed 25 Sep 2021)
10. ↑ John Curtin's Australian Journalists' Association Badge (National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, nfsa.gov.au accessed 25 Sep 2021)
11. ↑ 1927 Editor of the 'Westralian Worker' (Curtin University, john.curtin.edu.au accessed 24 Sep 2021)
12. ↑ Western Australia Marriage Index. (Department of the Justice, Western Australia, bdm.justice.wa.gov.au accessed 14 September 2021) index entry for John J A Curtin and Elsie Needham (District: Leederville, Registration Number: 17, Registration Year: 1917)
13. ↑ Sunday Times, Perth, Western Australia, 29 April 1917, page 5, column 2, Perth Prattle trove.nla.gov.au (Trove, National Library of Australia, trove.nla.gov.au accessed 14 September 2021)
14. ↑ Wikipedia contributors, "Residence of John Curtin," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, en.wikipedia.org (accessed September 24, 2021).
15. ↑ Wartime PM's daughter battled his critics. Published online 26 May 2009. (Sydney Morning Herald, smh.com.au accessed 24 Sep 2021)
16. ↑ John Curtin. Timeline. (National Archives of Australia, naa.gov.au accessed 25 Sep 2021)
17. ↑ Wikipedia contributors, "HMAS Sydney (D48)," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, en.wikipedia.org (accessed September 24, 2021).
18. ↑ Wikipedia contributors, "Attack on Pearl Harbor," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, en.wikipedia.org (accessed September 24, 2021).
19. ↑ ^{19.0 19.1 19.2} Curtin brings home troops (National Museum Australia, nma.gov.au accessed 24 Sep 2021)
20. ↑ John Curtin. During Office. (National Archives of Australia, naa.gov.au accessed 25 Sep 2021)
21. ↑ Historic Death Index (Access Canberra, accesscanberra.act.gov.au accessed 25 Sep 2021) index entry for Curtin, John (Death Date: 5 Jul 1945, Reference: 20000915)
22. ↑ John Curtin (1885-1945) (State Library of Western Australia, slwa.wa.gov.au accessed 25 Sep 2021)
23. ↑ The Albany Advertiser, Western Australia, 9 July 1945, page 1, column 2, Late John Curtin trove.nla.gov.au (Trove, National Library of Australia, trove.nla.gov.au accessed 24 September 2021)
24. ↑ John Curtin. After Office. (National Archives of Australia, naa.gov.au accessed 25 Sep 2021)
25. ↑ Karrakatta Historical Walk Trail One (Metropolitan Cemeteries Board, mcb.wa.gov.au accessed 24 Sep 2021)
26. ↑ Find a Grave, database and images findagrave.com accessed 24 September 2021), memorial page for John Joseph Curtin (8 Jan 1885–5 Jul 1945), Find A Grave: Memorial #12199532, citing Karrakatta Cemetery and Crematorium, Karrakatta, Nedlands City, Western Australia, Australia; Maintained by Find A Grave.
27. ↑ Museum of Australian Democracy (Old Parliament House) - John Curtin primeministers.moadoph.gov.au