Mayor William Howarth’s premises can be seen on the right next to Hamey’s photographic studio. Photo: Supplied.
If you read his published obituary, the man named William Howarth (born to James and Martha in 1864) who served as Wollongong Mayor from 1930 to 1932 sounds like he might have been OK.
But the obituary failed to mention he had been dubbed “the Mussolini of Wollongong” after banning a trade union celebration of the Russian Revolution and refusing to allow a street procession and picnic.
And that wasn’t even his first time as a mayor. Back in July 1897, Howarth had been sworn in as Mayor of Menzies Shire in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia where it is claimed “he made and lost a fortune” while working as an accountant and investing in gold mines.
The future Mayor of Wollongong was one of eight children.
His father, James, was born at Parramatta in 1825 and moved to Campbelltown, eventually working as Campbeltown’s sanitary inspector.
But as a petty-bourgeois entrepreneur staggering from one profit and loss to the next, Mayor William Howarth had a very mixed business career.
Supposedly droving cattle and sheep at Campbeltown by the age of 12, Howarth later served as the second town clerk of Bowral in 1889 before resigning to become accountant for the Berrima District Dairy Company with a salary of £200 a year.
William Howarth served as Wollongong Mayor from 1930 to 1932. Photo: The collections of Wollongong City Library and Illawarra Historical Society.
At Bowral, he also conducted Howarth & Co Modern Auctioneers in 1894 where he “almost invariably was late with his advertisements”. But having also previously worked as a compositor on newspapers, “when informed that it simply couldn’t be done” he type-set the advertisements himself.
Earlier Howarth had one business that had not ended well – his stint managing the Port Jackson Hotel at Circular Quay in Sydney. There in 1892 he sued for divorce from Sarah Agnes Howarth, on the grounds of her adultery with one Gilberto Parravicino, who just so happened to be boarding at Howarth’s Port Jackson Hotel.
Sarah had even managed to abscond with Mr Parravicino for a a cruise to Noumea – something she freely admitted in the ensuing court case.
Howarth’s subsequent bankruptcy was said to be due to “losses in the hotel, divorce court proceedings, being out of employment and failure in business”, despite, in desperation, endeavouring for a time to make money selling tea.
Back in Bowral Howarth was also in trouble in 1894 when charged with “taking away Eliza Jane Goodfellow against her father’s will”.
William Howarth first appears in the Illawarra press in August 1900 as an auctioneer and soon became involved in the Co-operative Fruit Movement.
Crown Street looking west, displaying Howarth’s Refreshment Rooms and Dining. Photo: Supplied.
As early as 1902 Howarth was also offering some of the services of a providore and no doubt also planning to soon launch a full-scale catering business.
Later he and his second wife operated a café called Howarth’s Refreshment Rooms and also provided similar services at agricultural shows and formal functions all over the place as well as at premises in Crown Street Wollongong.
While in business as a fruiterer at Wollongong, Howarth became president of the Fruitgrowers’ Association even though his commitment to the Co-operative Movement seems to have proved somewhat shaky.
Howarth proved quite an operator and when he learned “a moving mass of mullet and other fish” had come to shore at Port Kembla “on the beautiful little bay between the largest of the Five Islands”, he went into immediate action.
By evening he had the entire haul on the South Coast milk train headed for Sydney and placed in ice-rooms by midnight, ready for the market that morning.
It was estimated that the haul was worth about £50. And Howarth made sure he earned far more than the fisherman who had landed the catch.
Howarth’s Excelsior Hall at 242 Crown Street Wollongong, pictured in July 2024. Photo: Supplied.
By late 1927 Howarth had made enough money in Wollongong to be able to have his own Howarth’s Excelsior Hall built.
Previously he had operated his Refreshment Rooms business on the northern side of Crown Street in a building located in what is today’s Wollongong Mall between Keira and Church streets.
In 1930 as Wollongong Mayor, Howarth claimed to be discussing measures providing relief for the unemployed. But by 1932, he led his very politically conservative council in again refusing permission for demonstrations by the unemployed to be held and then went on “to have the names of members of the procession taken and to have them prosecuted”.
Throughout his reign as Mayor it is recorded that Howarth showed “vindictiveness and spleen against the dole workers” and “abused the workers who dared to show fight”.
As for those among the unemployed workers, miners and steelworkers who opposed both “any form of Fascism, or Mayor Howarth’s anti-working class activities”, Howarth publicly condemned them as “lickspittles of the Communists and guttersnipes.”
On his death in 1940, the South Coast Times claimed “hundreds would have desired to pay” Howarth a “last tribute of respect … but at his own request a private funeral took place.”
However, my suspicion (although of course I never met Howarth myself) is that quite a few of those “hundreds” may have possibly been keen to attend just in order to make sure he was dead.
