The first Australian state funeral was held in Victoria in 1863. In 1922 the first person in NSW, other than a politician, to be granted a state funeral as a ‘distinguished citizen’, was one of Australia’s most famous poets, Henry Lawson.
Poet and writer Henry Lawson died in Sydney on 2 September 1922. Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia’s “greatest short story writer“. His short stories and ballad-like verse are famous for his realistic portrayals of bush life.
Henry Archibald Hertzberg Lawson was born in June 1867 in a tent in Grenfell, on the New South Wales goldfields. A vocal nationalist and republican, Lawson regularly contributed to The Bulletin, and many of his works helped popularise the Australian vernacular in fiction. He wrote prolifically until the 1890s, but then his output declined due to struggles with alcoholism and mental illness.
He married Bertha Bredt in 1896, but the marriage ended unhappily, and she filed for divorce in 1903 citing Lawson’s habitual drunkenness, and emotional and psychological abuse. They had two children, a son Jim (Joseph) and a daughter Bertha.
Lawson never stayed in one place for long, and at times destitute, he spent periods in Darlinghurst Gaol and in psychiatric institutions. In 1903 he secured a room from Mrs Isabella Byers above her coffee house in North Sydney. This marked the beginning of a 20-year friendship between Mrs Byers and Lawson, and she cared for him until his death.
Despite his position as the most celebrated Australian writer of the time, Lawson was deeply depressed and perpetually poor. He became a frail, haunted and pathetic figure well known on the streets of Sydney. The Commonwealth Literary Fund granted him £1 a week pension from May 1920.
On 2nd September 1922, in a cottage in Abbotsford where he had been living with Mrs Byers, Lawson died of cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 55.
He was farewelled with a state funeral, one of the largest Sydney had ever seen. As the cottage where he died has been demolished, a memorial was erected in the grounds of Abbotsford Public School which was nearly opposite the site, and a bronze statue of Lawson stands in the Domain parklands, Sydney.
Selected links for relevant websites, books, movies, videos, and more. Some of these links lead to protected content on this website, learn more about that here.