Bill Farrow
Farrow, Bill (1866-1937)
William Farrow was born in the Singleton district on 19 April 1866, to James and Jane Farrow. His father was a railway contractor[1] and he spent a number of years after leaving school as a “nipper” working for private railway contractors before his first employment in the Government Railways in 1889, aged about 23. It might be thought that this early private work experience was therefore short, but in fact Bill, as he preferred to be known, had started work at 11 years old. This was his statement when giving evidence at a coroner’s enquiry into the Sydenham railway accident in 1901, where he had arrived quickly and assisted with the restoration of the track.[2]
I have been employed on railways since I was 11 years of age. I have laid hundreds of miles of line.
The formal record of his employment with the government railways begins on 20 January 1896, but he claimed an earlier, undocumented, 12 months in 1889 and 1890. This became relevant at the end of his career in terms of superannuation, but it was accepted, apparently without question, by no less an authority than Railway Commissioner, James Fraser. Fraser and Farrow had worked closely together in Fraser’s time as a civil engineer building major deviations and there is ample evidence of the commissioner’s high regard for his employee.
From 1896 Farrow’s work was as a foreman in the Perway Section based in Sydney and after 1900 for about the next 17 years with the Existing Lines Branch and for some of this time Fraser was the Engineer-in-Chief of that branch. Where Farrow worked is not known in detail, but in 1896 the Locksely deviation is noted in his record and in 1896, 1898 and 1899 he received bonuses of £20. That was a substantial sum when his daily pay rate was 12/-, or about £150 per year. After 1900 Farrow shifted to a weekly wage of £5, £6 and then £8 and in 1910 was transferred to the salaried staff at the equivalent rate of £416 per annum. These were the days of the major deviations on the Illawarra, South and West so that was where he would have worked. In 1913 he was a witness in an industrial case regarding wages paid in Queanbeyan.[3]
To access Bill Farrow's employment record use this link:
Briefly, for seven months May to December, in 1917 he became Manager of the City Railway Construction after the cancellation of the Norton Griffiths[4] contract arrangements, but even in departmental hands the whole project collapsed for want of funds due to the Great War and was abandoned. Farrow resumed his role as General Foreman with the Perway Branch.
In 1918 he was granted a bonus of £25 in connection with valuable work performed with shipping of coal at Newcastle. This amount of cash would represent several thousand dollars in modern values. The exact nature of this work is not clear but there is a detailed record of his evidence at the Coal Commission on 21 June 1919.[5] The stacking of coal seems to be related to supply questions raised by strikes and the potential deterioration of coal exposed to the atmosphere.
Farrow had remained loyal during the Great Railway Strike of 1917.
In 1919 his title became Works Superintendent and his salary rose to £735 per annum. In this year he was granted 3 months leave on full pay to visit America, with a further allowance of £50 for expenses. Bradfield, Engineer-in-Chief of the project, had toured America in 1914 learning techniques for building railways under cities and perhaps he wanted his Construction Supervisor to see what he had seen to equip him for the task ahead when work on the City Railway resumed now that the war was over. In February 1922 the project did resume and Farrow’s job became Supervisor of the work, and he was transferred to the Metropolitan Railway Construction (MRC) Branch, and his salary increased to £900. This rose steadily until by 1925 he was earning £1,006. For comparison the two Resident Engineers, Keith Fraser and Albert Humphries, were paid £701, Supervising Engineer William Burrow, £769 and Principal Design Engineer Robert Boyd, £795. The only person being paid more than Farrow in the MRC was the Engineer-in-Chief of the Branch, Bradfield, at £1,200, though he may have been paid a comparable amount by the Public Works Department for his role on the Sydney Harbour Bridge as well.
A description of some of the more difficult work is included in this obituary.[6]
Officers of the Department of Railways said yesterday that Mr. Farrow was a man of outstanding character whose word was his bond. His genius for sizing up the situation in repairing washaways and doing other urgent jobs was well known to the administration. His greatest work was in connection with the tunnelling for the city railway and, although over the retiring age, he remained in the service until both of the existing sections were opened. The excavations involved the underpinning of the foundations of several of the city’s biggest buildings. In some cases, the loads transferred from the original foundations to the top of the tunnels exceeded 400 tons, but the work was carried out to the satisfaction of the owners and the department, and claims for compensation were negligible. In one instance the problem of supporting a very large store under which four tunnels were being cut was regarded as so serious that a committee of architects and engineers was brought into consultation. After hearing the suggestions of Mr. Farrow, the committee decided to entrust him with the work and the result is entirely satisfactory. It is a tribute to his capacity that the building of the city railway was done without interference with business in the many premises under which the trains now run.
He worked without leave from 1921 such that by 1928 he had accumulated 22½ weeks leave as well as four weeks long service leave. He was allowed leave from 22 July until the end of 1928. Just what he did for these five months is yet to be learned. Perhaps it was a trial retirement, but at the end of that period he stated that he did not wish to retire and resumed work.
By the end of 1926 the first section of the City Railway, to Museum and St James, was completed and working. In a contemporary report[7] Engineer-in-Chief Bradfield is reported as saying:
The success of the constructional work was largely due to the untiring efforts of Mr William Farrow, the supervisor.
The achievement was marked, in an engineering sense, by the publication of six papers about the project by The Institution of Engineers Australia. They were re-published by the Australian Railway Historical Society (NSW) in 1976. In reviewing Bill Farrow’s role, the most striking paper is the first, by Commissioner and civil engineer, James Fraser. At the end of the paper he thanks the several heads of his branches, and their assistants, with their formal titles and concludes:
…and Bill Farrow, an old friend who has done notable work as Supervisor of the very difficult task entailed in carrying out the construction through the City of Sydney.
This seems to be a particularly warm and telling statement from Fraser who is generally ascribed the adjective ‘haughty’.
As early as 1922 The Evening News had reported:[8]
Anyone suggesting go-slowism on a Government job under Bill Farrow would be told: “Go to blithering blazes” by the tamest menial. Mr William Farrow has been in charge of big State undertakings for years. He is a man of proved capacity and leadership. But everybody calls him Bill, even the austere Chief Railway Commissioner.
For a transcription of the whole Evening News article see:
Much of the tunnel work to Town Hall and Wynyard was heavy steel-roofed tunnel. To prove the design of joints in special locations a test was arranged in the project's yard at Darling Harbour. The load for the test was provided by a large stack of the standard beams.
With the first section open and working, and funds starting to run short perhaps 1928 was a good time for Farrow to take leave and the work to slow, but the Sydney Harbour Bridge was well in hand and the second arm of the underground railway had a definite target opening date – the day the bridge was to open. He apparently did not use all his accrued leave in 1928 and probably worked without a break from then until 1932, as when he did retire he still had carried forward or accumulated another eight months leave.
With the bridge and railway opened the MRC branch was wound down. Farrow was formally transferred to Way and Works, Railway Construction and Maintenance on 23 March after the bridge opening celebrations and was intended to be on leave until 20 November when he would retire. This arrangement led to an odd twist. The Metropolitan Water Sewerage and Drainage Board had built a high-pressure tunnel from Potts Hill to the city as the major water supply main. It had quickly failed, and a Board of Inquiry was established. Plainly this was no responsibility of Farrow or the MRC, but he was recognised as being of such competence that his views were sought.[9] He was called to give evidence on 14 November 1932, during the period of his retirement leave and for this he would have to be re-imbursed. The mechanism arranged by Albert Fewtrell, then briefly Transport Commissioner, was to delay the retirement by a day until 22 November, the 20th being a Sunday.[10]
During the blasting for the excavation of Town Hall station the stone-arched port cochère at the front of the Town Hall in George Street had been shaken and damaged. There would have to be a reckoning with the City Council. The man nominated to do this was the retired Bill Farrow rather than the still-employed Keith Fraser, Albert Humphries or even John Bradfield. For this service in 1933, after he had retired, he was paid £4-4-0 (Four Guineas) as well as being provided with a first-class return ticket from Campbelltown.
He had had a long association with Campbelltown, though whether he commuted from there to work in the city is uncertain. Reports at the time of his death suggest that he had lived in Broughton Street, one of the main streets of the town, practically the whole of his life.[11]
Bill had married Elizabeth and they had only one child[12], a son, William James Farrow, who attended Sydney Grammar School, presumably boarding, and at the age of 21 graduated in mechanical engineering from the University in 1928.[13]
Bill Farrow died on Monday 26 July 1937 and was cremated at Rookwood Crematorium.
A wonderful testimony of his life’s career was vividly portrayed by the presence of considerably over 300 persons, representing practically every Government Department and Engineering Firms in the Metropolis, as well as relatives and friends.[14]
Listed as attending the service, among others, are Deputy Chief Civil Engineer William Beaver, Bill Hudson, CW Keele, WAG Douglas, RL Ranken, WS Burroughs (WF Burrow(?), Keith Fraser, Albert Humphries, and Tramways Commissioner EO Milne.[15]
An obituary[16] suggests that one of his last requests was that reference be not made to the services he had rendered either as a citizen of the town, [Campbelltown] or as an officer of the Government. This request seems to have been ignored. It was also requested that there be no flowers or mourning dress at the funeral.[17]
In 2024 Farrow's great granddaughter was a civil engineer working for a consultant firm in England and his great great grandson was studying mechanical engineering at Imperial College.
- ↑ Labor Daily. 28 July 1937.
- ↑ Evening News. 8 March 1901.
- ↑ Queanbeyan Age. 12 September 1913.
- ↑ A finance and construct arrangement with English contractor John Norton Griffiths.
- ↑ Newcastle Herald and Miners’ Advocate. 21 June 1919.
- ↑ The Labor Daily. 28 July 1937.
- ↑ Singleton Argus 23 December 1926
- ↑ Evening News. 26 April 1922.
- ↑ Farrow's railway employment record notes this service.
- ↑ Fewtrell’s letter is pinned to Farrow’s record card in NRS 12922.
- ↑ The Campbelltown News 30 July 1937
- ↑ William is the only child mentioned in the funeral notice Sydney Morning Herald, 27 July 1937
- ↑ Campbelltown News. 4 May 1928.
- ↑ Campbelltown News.30 July 1937.
- ↑ Labor Daily. 28 July 1937.
- ↑ The Campbelltown News 30 July 1937
- ↑ Sydney Morning Herald, 27 July 1937
