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Andrew Stuart (Andy) Stepney (1851–1914)

by Chris Cunneen

This article was published:

This entry is from People Australia

Andrew (Andy) Stuart Stepney, also known as Andrew Stuart Stepley (1851-1914), Aboriginal paddle-steamer hand, shearer, strongman and trade unionist

Birth: 26 December 1851 in Adelaide, South Australia, son of Edward Stepley or Stepney, cook, and Elizabeth, née Stewart, who signed with a mark. Marriage: Single. Death: 16 July 1914 at Benevolent Asylum, Waratah, Newcastle, New South Wales. Cause of death: spastic paraplegia and heart failure. He was buried in the Sandgate Cemetery with Methodist forms.

  • As a boy Stepney worked on ships, then at a pastoral station of the Chirnside brothers in Victoria. After the alcohol-induced death of his mother he found himself destitute in Melbourne. A newspaper there described him in 1865 as an intelligent, fifteen-year-old vagrant when he applied for admission to the industrial school to learn the trade of tailor.
  • In 1874 he was working on the paddle steamer Wentworth, trading on the Murray, Darling and Murrumbidgee rivers.  A “well-known character on the Darling,” in 1881 he was described as “A Wilcannia [NSW] celebrity”. In December 1886 he was a digger at the Teetulpa goldfields, South Australia.
  • By 1887 he was back in Wilcannia, where he joined the shearers’ union. He was said to have participated in a shearers’ strike in Hay in 1890.
  • In August 1894 he led a group of striking unionists harassing strike-breaking shearers at Tindarey station, near Cobar. He was summonsed on a charge of wilful trespass to appear at Cobar Court.
  • Spent some time in Queensland after the 1894 strike, and regularly attended cricket matches at Mutti.
  • Unhappy about being described as “an American negro”.  He claimed that his father was a “Zulu chief, captured young and turned into the boatswain of a British man-o’-war” and that his maternal grandmother was Aboriginal.
  • Contributors to newspapers reported the feats of physical strength performed by “Black Andy”, described as the “strong man of the Barwon”. According to one account, he was “6 ft 4 ins [cm] high . . . 20 stone [ kilos] in weight and he measured 50 inches [cm] round the chest”. Another reporter wrote that as a lad he witnessed Stepney’s feats of strength and described him as “17 stone, all bone and muscle”.
  • About 1908 he “settled down in a little town across the Queensland border and set up a business selling fruit, fish, etc.”

Sources
Jordan Humphries, ‘Aboriginal unionists in the 1890s shearers’ strikes: a forgotten history’, Marxist Left Review, No. 22, Winter 2021: https://marxistleftreview.org/articles/aboriginal-unionists-in-the-1890s-shearers-strikes-a-forgotten-history/

Additional Resources and Scholarship

Citation details

Chris Cunneen, 'Stepney, Andrew Stuart (Andy) (1851–1914)', People Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://ia.anu.edu.au/biography/stepney-andrew-stuart-andy-32470/text40273, accessed 27 December 2024.

© Copyright People Australia, 2012

Life Summary [details]

Alternative Names
  • Stepley, Andrew Stuart
Birth

26 December, 1851
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Death

16 July, 1914 (aged 62)
Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia

Cause of Death

spastic paraplegia

Cultural Heritage

Includes subject's nationality; their parents' nationality; the countries in which they spent a significant part of their childhood, and their self-identity.

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