Draft:Thomas Saywell

Thomas Saywell

Thomas Saywell (1837-1928) was an English-born tobacco manufacturer, property developer, mine owner and business person in New South Wales, Australia. He is particularly associated with the Sydney suburb of Brighton-le-Sands and the coal mines of Lithgow and the Southern Coalfields. He holds the dubious distinction of manufacturing the first Australian-made cigarettes.

Early life

Family background and early life

The Saywell family name was originally Seyuille, at the time when their Hugenot ancestors fled to England in 1604. The family had been lacemakers in France and Flanders. Eventually settling in Nottingham, they pursued lace making there.

Thomas Richard Saywell was born on 20 February 1837, in Radford, Nottingham. His mother died while he was an infant and his father remarried.

Thomas Saywell's father, George, was an expert in setting up steam-driven mechanical lace making machines. After the lace trade in Nottingham fell into decline, George, his brother and their families moved to France, in 1841. By 1842, they had settled in the village of Saint-Pierre-lès-Calais, now referred to as the Quartier Saint-Pierre of Calais. Thomas was sent to school there, and as a result was fluently bilingual in French and English.

Emigration to New South Wales

Economic conditions in France and the revolution of 1848, left the Saywell family and other English workers in France in a precarious position. With scant prospects at home in England, the workers petitioned the English government to assist them to migrate to a British colony. The Saywell family arrived in Sydney aboard Agincourt on 6 October 1848.

First years in New South Wales

Initially unable to take their savings out of France, the Saywell family faced poverty. George Saywell became a carrier, with two bullock teams and some horses and carted coal, but within a year or so had a small piece of land and a share in a coal mine. For a time, George ran a hotel at Maitland. Thomas was working there as a tobacco twister in 1852. He spent some time on the goldfields, not as a miner but assisting his uncle to run a paid lending library.

Thomas Saywell married Annie Ellen Fawcett, daughter of a Balmain stonemason, in 1862. He opened a tobacconist's shop in Park Street, Sydney, in 1863.

Entrepreneur

Tobacco manufacturing

Thomas Saywell tobacconist’s operation was in 1870, when he bought plant and machinery of the Eagle Tobacco Factory and installed it in his shop at 4 Park Street. Thereafter he used the brand name 'Eagle'. In 1874, he bought another tobacconists business from Edwin Penfold, whose son, William Clark Penfold, later became a well-known Sydney printer and stationer. In February 1873, Saywell bought land on Clarence Street, Sydney, and over the next two years built a tobacco factory there.

Saywell has the dubious distinction of being the manufacturer of the first Australian-made cigarettes. He was an advocate of protection of the local tobacco industry.

Coal mining

Bundanoon

Saywell held an interest in the Ringwood Coal Mine, near Bundanoon.

The mine closed after a timber trestle structure collapsed. Saywell moved equipment from the mine to his later mining venture, South Bulli Colliery.

South Bulli Colliery and Bellambi

Hales Collery

In August 1890, Ebenezer Vickery purchased the South Bulli Colliery.

South Clifton

In 1891, Saywell and his business partner William Wilson bought the South Clifton colliery from the North Illawarra Coal Company. In 1902, Saywell transferred his share of the ownership to a company Saywell's Collieries Limited, which also held interests in collieries around Lithgow.

Lady Robinson's Beach and Brighton-le-Sands

Saywell's land purchase

In the early 1880's, Saywell, anticipating the effect of the Illawarra railway, bought a large tract of land—in those days mainly sandhills—which ran from the beach frontage at Lady Robinson's Beach on Botany Bay, west to what is now Francis Avenue and as far north what is now as Bestic Street.

Initially, Saywell referred to the locality as 'New Brighton'. To avoid confusion with another 'New Brighton' near Manly, the area was renamed Brighton-le-Sands, after Brighton-le-Sands, Merseyside, in England.

In early 1886, the NSW Government resumed the entire length of Lady Robinson's Beach and a narrow strip of the foreshore land, totalling around 105 acres, running from Cooks River to Sans Souci. It became known as Cook Park.

Tramway

The first of Saywell's developments of the are Thomas Saywell's tramway ran from Rockdale railway station to Lady Robinson's Beach at Brighton-le-Sands, along Bay Street, before turning right on the Grand Parade, were it terminated near the site chosen for a new sea baths and hotel. It opened as a steam-hauled tramway in 1885.

Sea Baths

Saywell's Sea Baths, with the hotel at rear (December 1886)

To draw patrons to area, Saywell constructed sea baths, with a shark-proof enclosure. The design had consist of two adjoining baths, one for men and the other for women, each 200 feet long by 90 feet wide. There was wharf for steamers, refreshment rooms, waiting-rooms, ticket-office, laundries, and caretakers' offices would be housed in buildings forming an entrance to the baths. The baths were surrounded by a shark-proof fence, and would contain dressing-boxes and fresh-water showers. It was estimated that the baths would cost about £8000, to construct.

"Saywell's New Sea Baths" opened in October 1886. The baths were damage during storms in mid 1901.

New Brighton Hotel

Main entrance to the hotel (1887)

Saywell had the New Brighton Hotel erected in 1887, at the corner of The Grand Parade and Bay Street. It immediately became a popular seaside resort.

The three storey building had an entrance portico, wide verandahs and balconies, and sixty rooms. The main tower gave extensive views over Botany Bay. The hotel had an ice rink, running hot water, and electric lighting, and later a dance pavilion was built at the rear of the hotel. The hotel's architecture followed an eclectic mixture of Russian, Indian and Western influences, including towers and minarets.

It was Saywell, in collaboration with Samuel Cook, who had Norfolk Island pine trees planted, as a windbreak and to stabilize drifting sand. Some of the trees still stand on The Grand Parade.

From January 1893 to 1895, when the adjoining racecourse opened, the hotel building became the first home of Scots College, before once again becoming hotel.

Side view of the New Brighton Hotel, with the Assembly Hall at rear, and the steam tramway (1887)

Electric trams and electricity supply

The first electricity supply in the St George area, was that for Saywell's tramway. It was converted from steam to electric power, in 1900. An Act of the NSW Parliament, would have permitted Saywell to provide electric street lighting, for which he would have been paid, but it was never passed.

Saywell constructed a coal-fuelled powerhouse, in what had been stables at the rear of the New Brighton Hotel. It used a three-wire (-240V — 0V / Ground — +240V) direct current system, giving 480V d.c. for the trams—Saywell's trams had two trolley poles, one for positive and the other for negative—and 240V d.c. for other uses. The powerhouse included a large bank of batteries. As well as powering the trams and lighting his hotel, Saywell's powerhouse did supply some other customers with 'electric current'. These consumers included, by around 1911, some street lighting in the Municipality of Rockdale and some shop premises in Rockdale.

At the expiry of Saywell's 30-year tramway operating concession in 1914, the Government Railways took over the tramway, retiring Saywell's aging electric trams. The government trams worked on a different current collection arrangement (one trolley pole and rail return). The tramway supply and overhead was reconfigured, and, initially, Saywell's power station continued to provide power for the government tram. In December 1917, a new tramway substation entered service, at Rockdale, supplied by a high-voltage a.c. power line from Newtown, and ultimately powered from White Bay Power Station. The tramway continued to operate under government ownership, until September 1949, when it was replaced by a bus service.

Saywell's powerhouse continued to generate electrical power until October 1923, continuing to supply power to Rockdale's electric street lighting and to other consumers. The tramway still was used to move coal wagons from the railway, at Rockdale, to the power station. However, Saywell's d.c. system was far too small, too unreliable, and too antiquated to serve the growing St George area. Once alternating current electricity became available from the newly established St George County Council, Saywell's power station closed.

Brighton Racecourse

Saywell built a racecourse close to the hotel. It opened in 1895. The racecourse was created by levelling sand hills over the area for the course. One of Sydney's smaller racecourses, it hosted pony races and trotting events. It surrounded by a twelve-feet high paling fence. It was bounded by Bay Street in the south and what are now known as Francis Avenue, Moate Avenue, and back to Gordon Street, now known as Henson Street.

The racecourse closed in 1911, and the land was subsequently developed for detached residential housing.

Real estate development

More stuff here: https://www.bayside.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-06/Bell_Leonie.pdf

Family, later life, and death

Saywell and his wife had six daughters and six sons.

Saywell's wife Annie died in XXXX. He married Rebecca Elizabeth Osbourne in 1906.

Thomas Saywell continued to live at Brighton-le-Sands for many years, at 'Nevada', a 8 Grand Parade. He moved to Mosman, for the last few years of his life, where he died on 23 November 1928.

Aftermath

Saywell's estate was valued at £164,190. His widow received £1,000 a year and other annuities, including two of £100 each and one of £200. His private estate, which he valued at the time, mentioned in 1923 as being worth £89,000, was divided between four of his sons, George Fawcett Saywell, Thomas Stanley Saywell, Ross Saywell, and Victor Claude Saywell.

His shareholdings In Saywell's Tramway and Estates Ltd., South Clifton Coal Mining Co. Ltd, Saywell's Collieries Ltd., City Finance Co., and R. L. Scrutton, and Co. Ltd., was distrubuted transferred to registered shareholders in those companies with the exception of his son Bruce Wilson Saywell, . The exclusion of the son was explained by Saywell's having already fully provided for him.

Murder of Saywell's son

During the early hours of the morning of 22 April 1932, Saywell's son, Claude Victor, a wealthy solicitor, and his wife, Adeline Rebecca, were brutally attacked at their home in Bellevue Hill. The attack, made using what was probably a claw hammer, took place while they sleeping in their bedroom, where there was a loughboy , reportedly containing a considerable amount of jewelry and also some "rolls of notes". The loughboy had been disturbed and clothing stewn around the room, but there seemed to have been nothing of value taken. Two others in the house, the younger son Thomas and the family's maid, had slept through the event. The couple were found severely injured and barely alive, by their maid, on the following morning. Claude Victor died of his injuries in hospital on the following day. Mrs Saywell later regained consciousness in hospital, but she had lost the ability to speak and was left permanently paralysed. She could never identify her assailant nor give any evidence to the inquest. Some suspicion was aroused by the behaviour of Claude Victor's son, Jack, who had returned to the house very late. However, after Jack was interviewed and gave statements to the police, he seems to have been eliminated as a suspect. It emerged that he had been visiting his girlfriend. The coronial inquiry, which attracted widespread public interest, resulted in a finding of murder by an unknown person. The Saywell estate offered a reward £1,000 to the first person to give information leading to a conviction. Police were said to be confident of making an arrest, but it appears no charges were ever laid. It remained an unsolved case, and is still a mystery without any satisfactory explanation.

The site of Saywell's New Brighton Hotel is now occupied by a more recent hotel, the Brighton Novotel. His house 'Nevada' at 8 Grand Parade was also demolished and replaced with another house. The tall Norfolk Island pine trees on the Grand Parade, Brighton-le-Sands are a lasting legacy.