Published in Recorder, official newsletter of the Melbourne Labour History Society, Issue No. 311, March 2025, pp. 13-14.
Besides alluding to my typo, spelling “abrasives” instead of “abrasiveness” in quoting him, Ross McMullin in the December Recorder, offers a thought-provoking review of my In Search of Chris Watson. He asks the question: “Did personal factors influence [Watson’s] premature retirement?” He answers: “In 2004 I included in So Monstrous a Travesty [2004] the notion that Watson suffered so badly from piles — according to a medically qualified contemporary, who told Barry Jones — that he had to work at a high desk without sitting, but Easson doesn’t refer to this.” Quiet right. I did not. I thought of mentioning that ex-compositors and former newspaper people were used to working at a sloping, slightly elevated draftman’s desk, but I left that out too.
Intriguingly, in his book, a few lines and a footnote are all McMullin has about Watson’s symptoms and their supposed political significance, suggesting that this was a factor in his 1905 decision, quickly retracted, to resign the party leadership. The main reason for this leadership episode, as McMullin states in his book, was Watson’s disappointment about decisions taken at the 1905 ALP Conference. Both he and his party were then working out the roles, conventions, and limits of the parliamentary leadership and caucus on the one hand, and the party conference on the other, in determining policy. This ongoing tension is one of many reasons Australian Labor’s history is interesting.
Yet in his review for the Recorder, McMullin highlights my lack of reference to Watson’s so-called piles as a major sin of omission. I thought the evidence inconclusive. Here’s why.
On Watson’s personal ailments, David Headon in a superb 2022 paper for the Parliamentary Library, ‘A Great Pioneer—John Christian ‘Chris’ Watson’, refers to his forgoing the Labor Leadership in 1907 and notes “he had suffered severely from haemorrhoids for years” without attributing that factor as the sole or primary reason for Watson’s resignation, when Watson allowed his successor, Andrew Fisher, to take over. Interestingly, Watson stayed in Parliament another three years, finally deciding against recontesting his seat in 1910, aged 43. On his leaving parliamentary office altogether, Bede Nairn’s ADB entry refers to Watson being tired, exhausted, dreading the Melbourne commute from Sydney, and thinking that as “he possessed little money”, “his managerial skills might be put to some lucrative use”.
In his last year as a MP, in 1909, Watson was mostly in South Africa managing a gold mining venture. He was paired with a usually absent George Houston Reid. A photo, reproduced in my book, shows a shirtless Watson at a mine site in South Africa. Perhaps vigorous mine work, slurry sifting, assisting with shifting heavy equipment and mine drills, were early twentieth century-recommended tonics for those with Watson’s affliction. But I suspect not. It is hard to reconcile this sprightly image with the notion of an unwell man, worried about rectal debilities.
In his book, McMullin credits Barry Jones as his source on Watson’s health. I suspect Jones was Headon’s inspiration too. I sought Jones’ recollection, whose perspective I value. In private correspondence in August 2023, Jones said that “…in my grab bag of memory for 70+ years” was his knowledge of piles and political fortune, attributing the story “to two sources – King O’Malley. I used to talk to him in much the same way that PJK [Paul Keating] talked to JTL [Jack Lang]”. Second, to “William Alexander Osborne (1873-1967), and I direct you to my ADB entry on him…”
But how reliable is this ‘information’?
O’Malley was urged to run for Federal Parliament from Tasmania in 1901 by Watson, among others. Watson, significantly, did not include him in his 1904 ministry. They were not close. Osborn was a professor of physiology and histology at the University of Melbourne but was not Watson’s personal physician. Assuming Jones was, say, 18 years of age when he first knew O’Malley and Osborn, he would have been taxing those old gents about their memories of over 40 years before.
On O’Malley’s general reliability, I am doubtful. Arthur Hoyle in his ADB entry describes this Australian politician, the teller of tall stories, in these terms: “O’Malley had an arresting and, to many, an irritating presence. His mocking, mischievous personality contributed to the controversy he deliberately invited, but his verbal clowning never entirely obscured the complex and hard-headed man who was perhaps ‘his own worst enemy’.”
I decided chose not to include this credulous speculation from my narrative.
McMullin also refers to Ada Watson’s ill-health and possible alcoholism. He suggests discrepancies about her DOB. It would be interesting to know more. In 1999, Geoffrey Bolton wrote an essay ‘How Uneasy Lies the Head?: The Health of Australian Prime Ministers’ and says “the alcoholism of [Watson’s] first wife was a source of stress.” I have not found evidence of this. But if an historian as careful and thorough as Bolton says so, it is worth considering the point. Perhaps a perusal of his papers in the NLA might yield insights as to his source.
Mrs Ada Watson, is quoted in my book as saying in 1907 to a delegation of female party members who called on her after Watson announced he would stand down as party leader: “I don’t care about power or pay, position or Parliament; I only want what you women all want, my husband at home with me.” But he served another term in the parliament. Whether to mention Ada Watson’ supposed drinking problem is debateable. McMullin, in his book passed over the point without a mention. In the December Recorder review, however, he now says that he has “been notified” of new evidence “about other alcohol problems in Ada’s family.” But McMullin holds off revealing to the reader what this notification was or might imply. Is this more gossip or something of evidentiary importance? One day McMullin might tell us.
Historians need to assess conjecture and facts, likely, certain, and unproveable. By implication, on Watson leaving political prominence, I favoured Nairns’ medically neutral assessment that Watson had had enough, was worn out, and happy to pass the baton, both in 1907 (the Labor leadership) and 1910 (as an MP).
