OCCUPATION
Accountant and company secretary.
INTRODUCTION
Henry Victor ('Harry') Ellis-Jones, an Australian accountant and company secretary, was born Henry Victor Jones on May 31, 1919, at 'York Cottage', The Parade, Dulwich Hill, Municipality of Marrickville, in metropolitan Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, to parents Victor Arthur and Violet Victoria (Porter) Jones.
His father Victor Arthur Jones (who died in 1952 aged 61) was a butcher by trade who for a time owned two butcher shops in and around Marrickville. Unfortunately, Vic lost both of his butcher shops during the Great Depression of the 1930s and was forced to become a rubber worker and later a cold room storeman for most of the remainder of his working life. He did, however, briefly help out in a butcher's shop in his later years whilst otherwise living in retirement at Minto, then a small town south-west of Sydney on the outskirts of Campbelltown which is now a regional city centre and the capital of the Macarthur region of New South Wales. At other times in his life Vic also worked as a milk vendor (his occupation at the time of Harry's birth), bread carter and rubber worker.
Harry's mother Violet Victoria (Porter) Jones was gifted in oil painting but was a somewhat troubled woman. Unhappy in her marriage, she sought solace in alcohol and eventually looked outside the marriage for fulfilment. On May 26, 1937, just 5 days before Harry's 18th birthday, she died in hospital from complications arising out of what proved to be an ultimately successful suicide attempt.
Despite humble and most difficult beginnings Harry excelled as an accountant and later as the chartered company secretary of one of Australia's biggest 100 companies.
ANCESTRY
Harry's ancestry was Australian, Welsh, English, Scottish, Irish and French Huguenot.
Harry's paternal great grandfather, Welsh-born William Ellis Jones (1826-1908) was a prominent colonial builder at Bathurst, in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales. William and his brother, the soon-to-be more well-known David Jones (1819-1899), who became a leading building contractor in Bathurst, settled in Bathurst in 1862. Together they worked on many important building projects including the Bathurst Court House, the Bathurst Railway Station, the Agricultural College, and Abercrombie House, as well as building several houses in the township of Bathurst. An active Methodist, William sang in the church choir at Bathurst for almost 40 years. He also constructed the pulpit and communion rail in that church (now Bathurst Uniting Church). David Jones also built the Goulburn Court House at Goulburn, New South Wales, which was Australia's first inland city.
The family of William Ellis Jones's wife, Elizabeth Haylock Coote (1826-1898), on the paternal side of her mother Madelaine Henrietta Vernezobre (1803-1883), were members of the prominent Huguenot (French Protestant) family, the Vernezobres. The Vernezobre family came from Villeveyrac (then also known as Villemagne), a commune in the Hérault department in what is now known as the Occitanie region in southern France and relocated to, among other places, England via Germany in the early 1700s to escape persecution and possibly death at the hands of French Catholics. Elizabeth Haylock Coote's maternal grandfather David John Vernezobre (1773-1823) was born in the (then) Dutch colony of Suriname, on the north-eastern Atlantic coast of South America, and his father Charles A Vernezobre (1724-1775) as well as his parents were born in Amsterdam, Holland. Other family members were born in Prussia and England, among other places. Interestingly, there was also a French Huguenot connection through Harry's paternal grandmother, Mary Elizabeth [also known as Elizabeth Mary or Minnie] Garde (1865-1886). The Garde family were also originally Huguenots.
A grandson of William Ellis Jones, Wilfred Walter Jones (1986-1915), who was a first cousin, once removed, of Harry, served in the Australian Imperial Force in World War I as a sapper. After enlisting on February 26, 1915, and landing at Gallipoli on September 3 of that year, he was killed in action there the very next month (on October 17, 1915) when he was apparently blown up by a demolition from a nearby Turkish tunnel. He is buried in Lone Pine Cemetery, a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in the former Anzac sector of the Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey.
Harry's maternal grandfather, English-born Alfred John Porter (1864/5-1939), was a seaman. He made his maiden voyage to Australia in the late 1870s as a deck boy on Devitt & Moore's famous passenger clipper 'Sobraon'—the largest composite-hull sailing vessel ever built—and he continued to serve on the 'Sobraon' for many years thereafter. The ship was later sold to the (then) colonial government of New South Wales for use as a reformatory ship before being sold to the Australian federal government, renamed HMAS Tingira, and used as a Royal Australian Navy training ship before finally being broken up in 1941. At the time of Porter's retirement at the age of 65 he was chief steward on the RMS Aorangi, his last vessel.
THE EARLY YEARS
Harry's early years were spent in Dulwich Hill, Sydenham, Earlwood and Drummoyne, in metropolitan Sydney, New South Wales. He was dux of the primary school at Earlwood Public School, Earlwood, in metropolitan Sydney NSW, and for a time was a student at Canterbury Boys' High School, at Canterbury, also in metropolitan Sydney NSW. He was a good student and also good at sport including rugby union, cycling and boxing.
Harry left school at age 13, and became an office boy, in order to support the family. (It was at the height of the Depression.)
A volume of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare was presented to Harry by the Police Association of New South Wales as an acknowledgment of the merit of an essay of his, on 'The Seven Ages of Man', which was published in Police News (January 1, 1933).
MILITARY SERVICE, CHANGE OF NAME AND MARRIAGE
Harry served in World War II, from 1940 to 1945 (rank at discharge: sergeant), in the Australian Imperial Force (Australian Army: posting at discharge—2/1 Australian Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment Signals), having also served in the Australian Militia prior to formal enlistment in the Australian Army. He served both in Australia and in the Middle East (Palestine and Syria), and almost died from lobar pneumonia while on service in 1943. The illness prevented him from securing further military promotion (relevantly, as a major) and undoubtedly contributed to the development of other medical conditions that were subsequently accepted as being service-related.
Harry changed his name by deed poll to Henry Victor Ellis-Jones on June 23, 1944. He had always been told by his father, uncle and others in the Jones family (including the Jones family historian Elizabeth Emily Fletcher Jones, his aunt) that the original family name back in Wales was 'Ellis-Jones'. Research has neither proved nor disproved that belief.
He married Phyllis May Walsh at Central Baptist Church in Sydney on August 26, 1944. Their son Ian David Ellis-Jones was born in Paddington NSW on March 3, 1955. Although Harry's parents had not enjoyed a happy married life together he and his wife Phyl would enjoy a very happy marriage for 37 years.
For many years—roughly from or about the time of his marriage until the early 1960s—Harry belonged to the friendly society and temperance promoting organisation The Independent Order of Rechabites and took advantage of its health fund. He would partake of alcohol thereafter but rarely to excess except in the last couple of years of his life when he was very depressed after the death of Phyl.
STUDIES AND EARLY CAREER
Harry studied accountancy by correspondence before World War II and after the War he became a fully qualified accountant with three separate accounting qualifications including one in cost accountancy. He successfully completed a post-graduate certificate course in the latter at Sydney Technical College in 1950.
Harry would later become a chartered company secretary as well, having passed the examinations of The Chartered Institute of Secretaries (London), Australian Branch, NSW Division in 1949. He secured 3rd place in the intermediate section of the examinations of the Institute. In time he became a Fellow of the Australian Society of Accountants and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries, and was appointed a Justice of the Peace in the State of New South Wales on October 28, 1964.
His professional career included employment at Forsters Products Pty Ltd (aka Forster and Co) [office boy/clerk] (from 1933 to 1936), Froscapt Refrigerating Cabinet Manufacturers [office boy/clerk] (from 1936 to 1940), L J Foster & Company Pty Limited [assistant accountant] (from 1945 to 1947), Rava (Sydney) Pty Ltd [accountant] (in 1947), W & T Avery (Australia) Pty Ltd [area accountant] (from 1947 to 1950), and H & E Crossan Pty Ltd [company secretary and accountant] (from 1950 to 1951).
THE R W MILLER YEARS
R W Miller & Co Pty Ltd was founded by mine and ship-owner Captain Robert William Miller (1879-1958) in 1919, the year of Harry's birth, although it seems he traded under the name R W Miller and Company from early 1912. Harry joined Millers in 1951, as an accountant at Millers Brewery Pty Limited and associate companies. Millers Brewery was formerly Briton's Brewery, and was located on Taverner's Hill at Petersham, in metropolitan Sydney, New South Wales. He stayed with Millers Brewery until 1957 when he left to work for Philips Electrical Industries Pty Limited as accountant (finance administration). He did not enjoy working at Philips, and so in 1960 he found his way back to Millers, and its head office (R W Miller & Co Pty Limited), as senior accountant.
In 1962 Harry became the founding secretary and public officer of the large and influential Australian public company R W Miller (Holdings) Limited, having been heavily involved in the company's public float. Over the years Millers had diverse interests in, among other things, coal mining, shipping, stevedoring, bulk haulage, oil transportation, hotels, hotel accessories, brewing, wine and spirit merchanting, butchering, engineering and insurance. The company soon became one of Australia's biggest 100 companies.
During the years Harry was company secretary of Millers (1962-77) the corporate conglomerate gained markets for its Hunter Valley, New South Wales coal in Victoria and South Australia, pioneered coal trade with Japan and later Europe, established a pioneering Australian tanker fleet to carry oil by building oil tankers and also converting other acquired ships into modern bulk carriers, and added road transport, insurance and engineering to its collieries and ships. At its peak the company had a financial interest in nearly 60 hotels as well loans totalling over $2 million to various licensed clubs whose events and activities were often generously sponsored by the company. The hotels were a cut above most pubs for the time; they had carpets (they were the first pubs in New South Wales to have carpeted public bars), pleasant surroundings and clean amenities, and were perhaps the first to introduce regular entertainment. During his time with Millers Harry was the licensee of a number of hotels owned by the company.
Harry was very much involved in the financial side of all these activities, and worked closely with Millers' formidable and larger-than-life managing director and chairman Roderick William (later Sir Roderick) Miller (1911-1971) who greatly admired Harry's honesty, loyalty, dedication, talent and hard work. Harry supported and helped facilitate Miller's twin goal of establishing an Australian oil tanker fleet and blunting the obscene influence and dominance of overseas monopolies in the shipping industry, while at all times warning Miller that the company was overextending itself financially and becoming increasingly vulnerable to takeover. Harry's attention to detail, while never losing sight of the larger picture, prevented many a disaster.
To achieve the above mentioned goals it was necessary to take on the Australian Government which was unduly protective of the foreign companies and their privileged position. Millers held out, and eventually prevailed. In early 1963 Millers bought and introduced the first Australian flag tanker onto the Australian coast ('Millers Canopus'). Before then, all Australian coastal tanker trade had been carried in foreign flag ships. After another year of wrangling with the Australian federal government, conditional approval was given to Millers in July 1964 to import two more tankers. The cost, both financial and human, was great for all concerned, but it was an immense victory for, above all, Australia.
Harry was company secretary of Millers, as well as its many subsidiaries, during all the years that the holding company was listed on the Sydney Stock Exchange and beyond those years. Each year he was responsible for preparing the holding company's annual accounts as well as its annual report. Throughout the 1960s the company's annual report, in which Harry took a special interest (he saw it as an important exercise in public relations, and not just the fulfilment of a statutory requirement), was a splendid document complete with glossy colour photographs of some of the company's beers ('Make Friends with Millers'), hotels, coal trucks ('R W Miller Washed Coals'), coal mines, coal and oil tankers and the like.
Harry resigned as company secretary of R W Miller (Holdings) Limited in late 1977. His resignation caused genuine consternation at Millers. The former Lady Miller (now Mrs Elizabeth [Betty] Aynsley-Cooke), in particular, expressed her sadness at Harry leaving the company and thanked him for all that he had done for both the company and her late husband.
THE HOWARD SMITH YEARS
In 1978 Harry became the assistant company secretary of Howard Smith Limited which had been established in 1854 by Captain William Howard Smith, who began transporting both people and supplies to the goldfields. Originally founded as William Howard Smith and Sons Pty Ltd, the company became Howard Smith Company Ltd in 1901 and in 1914 changed to Howard Smith Limited. In 1979 Millers became a subsidiary of Howard Smith and by 1985 was fully owned by that company. However, over the ensuing years ownership of Millers would change several times, with owners including corporate giants such as Atlantic Richfield and Rio Tinto. As for Howard Smith Limited, it was taken over by Wesfarmers Retail Pty Ltd in 2001.
Harry left Howard Smith Limited, and effectively ended his professional career, in May 1980 in order to stay home and attend to the needs of his seriously ailing wife Phyl.
BEREAVEMENT AND THEREAFTER
Phyl died of metastatic breast and bone cancer at Wahroonga, in metropolitan Sydney NSW, on November 12, 1981. (note. From 1958 to 1983 Phyl and Harry had lived with their son Ian in West Pymble, in metropolitan Sydney NSW. )
Although he had retired from full-time employment in May 1980, Harry worked part-time as a bookkeeper/accountant for a brief period in 1984 for the law firm of Richard Allen Davies, Solicitor and Conveyancer, at Eastwood NSW.
INTERESTS AND HOBBIES
During the late 1950s Harry served as treasurer of Gordon Nursery School [now Gordon Community Preschool] at Gordon, New South Wales, which his son Ian attended in 1958-59. For a while he was active in the Ku-ring-gai Orchid Society. He was a member of The Returned and Services League, Australia (RSL), a support organisation for men and women who have served or are serving in the Australian Defence Force. He was also for many years a member of the Sydney Cricket Ground, the North Sydney Anzac Memorial Club, and Drummoyne Sailing Club.
Harry was highly skilled in carpentry and joinery (making most of the furniture [all in Queen Anne style] in the family home) and in his later years he took up oil painting as a hobby and attended art classes. Other hobbies and interests over the years included orchid growing, gardening, philately, reading (especially British and Australian history and biography), music (especially Welsh choirs and military band music), family history, cycling, tennis, swimming, boxing, fishing, golf, football (mainly rugby union), cricket, jogging and walking.
Proud of his Welsh heritage, he loved all things Welsh, but especially its music and rugby team.
RELIGION
Christened an Anglican, Harry was a fellow traveller with Christianity at least as respects its moral and ethical content and the man Jesus. He believed in God and respected those who were religious—as well as those who weren't—but was agnostic as respect many religious claims and he rejected things that he regarded as being superstitious or irrational. In his final years, his two closest friends were devout Roman Catholics, but he would often say to them, as well as to his son Ian, that he couldn't understand how otherwise intelligent people could believe in doctrines and dogmas that he thought were downright silly. He would not argue about religion, for he saw that as being pointless, but that didn't stop him making the occasional crack about such Catholic dogmas as papal infallibility and the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.
One of his favourite books was The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Another book which had an influence for good on his life and thinking was Dale Carnegie's How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), in which the author said: '[T]he best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today's work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.' A Stoic at heart, Harry lived by those words.
POLITICS AND FRIENDS
Despite his humble working class family background Harry was politically conservative, always voting for the Liberal Party of Australia which for the most part is a conservative party. However, he had great respect for a number of trade union officials and politicians, both from the left and the right, with whom he interacted on a regular basis at Millers, most of all, Eliot V Elliott (1902-1984), the influential leader of the Seamen's Union of Australia from 1941 to 1978, who was a member of the Communist Party of Australia and later a founding member of the Socialist Party of Australia. In addition, Harry was a great admirer of Paul Robeson (1898-1976), the African American singer, actor and left-wing political activist.
Sir William (Billy) McMahon, Prime Minister of Australia from 1971-72, and E G (Gough) Whitlam (1916-2014), Prime Minister of Australia from 1972-75, were semi-regular visitors to the Millers head office in Scottish House, 17-19 Bridge Street, Sydney, and to Harry's office in particular, seeking generous political donations to their respective parties (Liberal and Australian Labor Party respectively). Harry was authorised by Sir Roderick Miller, who knew both politicians very well (among many others on all sides of politics), to write out cheques in the same amount to both parties and to give them to the men.
Harry's closest friends were two work colleagues from Millers, lawyer Bill Conway and executive Frank Murphy. Both were devout Roman Catholics (see 'Religion', above).
ILLNESSES AND DEATH
Persistent ill-health plagued Harry in his final years. Long days at work and almost constant stress at the crisis-prone Millers, exacerbated by the many rounds of legal proceedings in Australia and the United Kingdom, as well as many decades of smoking took their toll on his health and he visibly aged well before his time. In his later years he suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, and left-sided heart failure. He had a myocardial infarction in 1979 and thereafter suffered from ischaemic heart disease as well as transient ischaemic attacks.
Harry's final couple of years were spent for the most part in Eastwood, in metropolitan Sydney NSW, but during the last few months of his life, when not in hospital, he stayed at the Pymble home of his son Ian and daughter-in-law Elspeth (a nursing sister) and their young daughter Fiona. The latter attended to Harry's medical and other needs with great devotion.
In mid-1984 Harry was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer [undifferentiated large cell carcinoma] with brain metastases. Although very unwell, and increasingly so as the months went by, he typically bore his final illness with great stoicism. That was the way he had lived his life. His last words to his son Ian were, 'I'm at peace with everyone.'
Harry died of hypostatic pneumonia due to the cancer at Lady Davidson Hospital, North Turramurra, in metropolitan Sydney, on April 28, 1985 at the age of 65.
FUNERAL AND TRIBUTES
Harry's funeral, which took place in the North Chapel of the Northern Suburbs Crematorium, in North Ryde NSW, was officiated by a Baptist minister, The Reverend Bryan J Hoar, who had often visited Harry in his final years. The two had struck up a friendship and had mutual respect for each other. Harry was eulogized as a decent, honourable and hardworking man, a highly capable, reliable and trustworthy employee, and a good husband and father. His body was cremated and his ashes interred next to those of his late wife Phyl at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium Gardens. He was survived by his son Ian, a brother Lloyd and a half-sister Beryl.
Shortly after his death Harry's son Ian had this to say about his late father:
'As a husband he was ever loving and faithful. He worked so very hard so that my mother and I could live comfortably. He sacrificed his own happiness and pleasures for the sake of his family. He taught me the importance of hard work, dedication, persistence and attention to detail, and of doing your job well even when you did not feel like it. His final years, after the death of my mother, were spent largely in loneliness and terrible illness, yet he still thought of others and was very devoted to my wife and my young daughter. He was a sad man in many ways, and had suffered, but there was an inner goodness in him.'
Cymru Am Byth [Wales Forever]!
'The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.'
—Quatrain LI, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, as translated into English by Edward FitzGerald.
See also Find A Grave Memorials # 145072770 (Phyllis May "Phyl" Walsh Ellis-Jones), # 159604732 (Hilda May Trollope Pollard), # 157983588 (Victor Arthur Jones), # 158274526 (Violet Victoria Porter Jones), # 153906745 (John Victor 'Jacky' Jones), and # 135153728 (Lloyd Arthur Jones).
Note. This biographical profile was written by Dr Ian Ellis-Jones, of Sydney NSW Australia, who is the son of Henry Victor Ellis-Jones.
REFERENCE MATERIAL
Ellis-Jones, H V. Unpublished memoir, letters and other writings, family scrapbooks and miscellaneous records. nd. Collection of I D Ellis-Jones.
Accountant and company secretary.
INTRODUCTION
Henry Victor ('Harry') Ellis-Jones, an Australian accountant and company secretary, was born Henry Victor Jones on May 31, 1919, at 'York Cottage', The Parade, Dulwich Hill, Municipality of Marrickville, in metropolitan Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, to parents Victor Arthur and Violet Victoria (Porter) Jones.
His father Victor Arthur Jones (who died in 1952 aged 61) was a butcher by trade who for a time owned two butcher shops in and around Marrickville. Unfortunately, Vic lost both of his butcher shops during the Great Depression of the 1930s and was forced to become a rubber worker and later a cold room storeman for most of the remainder of his working life. He did, however, briefly help out in a butcher's shop in his later years whilst otherwise living in retirement at Minto, then a small town south-west of Sydney on the outskirts of Campbelltown which is now a regional city centre and the capital of the Macarthur region of New South Wales. At other times in his life Vic also worked as a milk vendor (his occupation at the time of Harry's birth), bread carter and rubber worker.
Harry's mother Violet Victoria (Porter) Jones was gifted in oil painting but was a somewhat troubled woman. Unhappy in her marriage, she sought solace in alcohol and eventually looked outside the marriage for fulfilment. On May 26, 1937, just 5 days before Harry's 18th birthday, she died in hospital from complications arising out of what proved to be an ultimately successful suicide attempt.
Despite humble and most difficult beginnings Harry excelled as an accountant and later as the chartered company secretary of one of Australia's biggest 100 companies.
ANCESTRY
Harry's ancestry was Australian, Welsh, English, Scottish, Irish and French Huguenot.
Harry's paternal great grandfather, Welsh-born William Ellis Jones (1826-1908) was a prominent colonial builder at Bathurst, in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales. William and his brother, the soon-to-be more well-known David Jones (1819-1899), who became a leading building contractor in Bathurst, settled in Bathurst in 1862. Together they worked on many important building projects including the Bathurst Court House, the Bathurst Railway Station, the Agricultural College, and Abercrombie House, as well as building several houses in the township of Bathurst. An active Methodist, William sang in the church choir at Bathurst for almost 40 years. He also constructed the pulpit and communion rail in that church (now Bathurst Uniting Church). David Jones also built the Goulburn Court House at Goulburn, New South Wales, which was Australia's first inland city.
The family of William Ellis Jones's wife, Elizabeth Haylock Coote (1826-1898), on the paternal side of her mother Madelaine Henrietta Vernezobre (1803-1883), were members of the prominent Huguenot (French Protestant) family, the Vernezobres. The Vernezobre family came from Villeveyrac (then also known as Villemagne), a commune in the Hérault department in what is now known as the Occitanie region in southern France and relocated to, among other places, England via Germany in the early 1700s to escape persecution and possibly death at the hands of French Catholics. Elizabeth Haylock Coote's maternal grandfather David John Vernezobre (1773-1823) was born in the (then) Dutch colony of Suriname, on the north-eastern Atlantic coast of South America, and his father Charles A Vernezobre (1724-1775) as well as his parents were born in Amsterdam, Holland. Other family members were born in Prussia and England, among other places. Interestingly, there was also a French Huguenot connection through Harry's paternal grandmother, Mary Elizabeth [also known as Elizabeth Mary or Minnie] Garde (1865-1886). The Garde family were also originally Huguenots.
A grandson of William Ellis Jones, Wilfred Walter Jones (1986-1915), who was a first cousin, once removed, of Harry, served in the Australian Imperial Force in World War I as a sapper. After enlisting on February 26, 1915, and landing at Gallipoli on September 3 of that year, he was killed in action there the very next month (on October 17, 1915) when he was apparently blown up by a demolition from a nearby Turkish tunnel. He is buried in Lone Pine Cemetery, a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in the former Anzac sector of the Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey.
Harry's maternal grandfather, English-born Alfred John Porter (1864/5-1939), was a seaman. He made his maiden voyage to Australia in the late 1870s as a deck boy on Devitt & Moore's famous passenger clipper 'Sobraon'—the largest composite-hull sailing vessel ever built—and he continued to serve on the 'Sobraon' for many years thereafter. The ship was later sold to the (then) colonial government of New South Wales for use as a reformatory ship before being sold to the Australian federal government, renamed HMAS Tingira, and used as a Royal Australian Navy training ship before finally being broken up in 1941. At the time of Porter's retirement at the age of 65 he was chief steward on the RMS Aorangi, his last vessel.
THE EARLY YEARS
Harry's early years were spent in Dulwich Hill, Sydenham, Earlwood and Drummoyne, in metropolitan Sydney, New South Wales. He was dux of the primary school at Earlwood Public School, Earlwood, in metropolitan Sydney NSW, and for a time was a student at Canterbury Boys' High School, at Canterbury, also in metropolitan Sydney NSW. He was a good student and also good at sport including rugby union, cycling and boxing.
Harry left school at age 13, and became an office boy, in order to support the family. (It was at the height of the Depression.)
A volume of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare was presented to Harry by the Police Association of New South Wales as an acknowledgment of the merit of an essay of his, on 'The Seven Ages of Man', which was published in Police News (January 1, 1933).
MILITARY SERVICE, CHANGE OF NAME AND MARRIAGE
Harry served in World War II, from 1940 to 1945 (rank at discharge: sergeant), in the Australian Imperial Force (Australian Army: posting at discharge—2/1 Australian Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment Signals), having also served in the Australian Militia prior to formal enlistment in the Australian Army. He served both in Australia and in the Middle East (Palestine and Syria), and almost died from lobar pneumonia while on service in 1943. The illness prevented him from securing further military promotion (relevantly, as a major) and undoubtedly contributed to the development of other medical conditions that were subsequently accepted as being service-related.
Harry changed his name by deed poll to Henry Victor Ellis-Jones on June 23, 1944. He had always been told by his father, uncle and others in the Jones family (including the Jones family historian Elizabeth Emily Fletcher Jones, his aunt) that the original family name back in Wales was 'Ellis-Jones'. Research has neither proved nor disproved that belief.
He married Phyllis May Walsh at Central Baptist Church in Sydney on August 26, 1944. Their son Ian David Ellis-Jones was born in Paddington NSW on March 3, 1955. Although Harry's parents had not enjoyed a happy married life together he and his wife Phyl would enjoy a very happy marriage for 37 years.
For many years—roughly from or about the time of his marriage until the early 1960s—Harry belonged to the friendly society and temperance promoting organisation The Independent Order of Rechabites and took advantage of its health fund. He would partake of alcohol thereafter but rarely to excess except in the last couple of years of his life when he was very depressed after the death of Phyl.
STUDIES AND EARLY CAREER
Harry studied accountancy by correspondence before World War II and after the War he became a fully qualified accountant with three separate accounting qualifications including one in cost accountancy. He successfully completed a post-graduate certificate course in the latter at Sydney Technical College in 1950.
Harry would later become a chartered company secretary as well, having passed the examinations of The Chartered Institute of Secretaries (London), Australian Branch, NSW Division in 1949. He secured 3rd place in the intermediate section of the examinations of the Institute. In time he became a Fellow of the Australian Society of Accountants and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries, and was appointed a Justice of the Peace in the State of New South Wales on October 28, 1964.
His professional career included employment at Forsters Products Pty Ltd (aka Forster and Co) [office boy/clerk] (from 1933 to 1936), Froscapt Refrigerating Cabinet Manufacturers [office boy/clerk] (from 1936 to 1940), L J Foster & Company Pty Limited [assistant accountant] (from 1945 to 1947), Rava (Sydney) Pty Ltd [accountant] (in 1947), W & T Avery (Australia) Pty Ltd [area accountant] (from 1947 to 1950), and H & E Crossan Pty Ltd [company secretary and accountant] (from 1950 to 1951).
THE R W MILLER YEARS
R W Miller & Co Pty Ltd was founded by mine and ship-owner Captain Robert William Miller (1879-1958) in 1919, the year of Harry's birth, although it seems he traded under the name R W Miller and Company from early 1912. Harry joined Millers in 1951, as an accountant at Millers Brewery Pty Limited and associate companies. Millers Brewery was formerly Briton's Brewery, and was located on Taverner's Hill at Petersham, in metropolitan Sydney, New South Wales. He stayed with Millers Brewery until 1957 when he left to work for Philips Electrical Industries Pty Limited as accountant (finance administration). He did not enjoy working at Philips, and so in 1960 he found his way back to Millers, and its head office (R W Miller & Co Pty Limited), as senior accountant.
In 1962 Harry became the founding secretary and public officer of the large and influential Australian public company R W Miller (Holdings) Limited, having been heavily involved in the company's public float. Over the years Millers had diverse interests in, among other things, coal mining, shipping, stevedoring, bulk haulage, oil transportation, hotels, hotel accessories, brewing, wine and spirit merchanting, butchering, engineering and insurance. The company soon became one of Australia's biggest 100 companies.
During the years Harry was company secretary of Millers (1962-77) the corporate conglomerate gained markets for its Hunter Valley, New South Wales coal in Victoria and South Australia, pioneered coal trade with Japan and later Europe, established a pioneering Australian tanker fleet to carry oil by building oil tankers and also converting other acquired ships into modern bulk carriers, and added road transport, insurance and engineering to its collieries and ships. At its peak the company had a financial interest in nearly 60 hotels as well loans totalling over $2 million to various licensed clubs whose events and activities were often generously sponsored by the company. The hotels were a cut above most pubs for the time; they had carpets (they were the first pubs in New South Wales to have carpeted public bars), pleasant surroundings and clean amenities, and were perhaps the first to introduce regular entertainment. During his time with Millers Harry was the licensee of a number of hotels owned by the company.
Harry was very much involved in the financial side of all these activities, and worked closely with Millers' formidable and larger-than-life managing director and chairman Roderick William (later Sir Roderick) Miller (1911-1971) who greatly admired Harry's honesty, loyalty, dedication, talent and hard work. Harry supported and helped facilitate Miller's twin goal of establishing an Australian oil tanker fleet and blunting the obscene influence and dominance of overseas monopolies in the shipping industry, while at all times warning Miller that the company was overextending itself financially and becoming increasingly vulnerable to takeover. Harry's attention to detail, while never losing sight of the larger picture, prevented many a disaster.
To achieve the above mentioned goals it was necessary to take on the Australian Government which was unduly protective of the foreign companies and their privileged position. Millers held out, and eventually prevailed. In early 1963 Millers bought and introduced the first Australian flag tanker onto the Australian coast ('Millers Canopus'). Before then, all Australian coastal tanker trade had been carried in foreign flag ships. After another year of wrangling with the Australian federal government, conditional approval was given to Millers in July 1964 to import two more tankers. The cost, both financial and human, was great for all concerned, but it was an immense victory for, above all, Australia.
Harry was company secretary of Millers, as well as its many subsidiaries, during all the years that the holding company was listed on the Sydney Stock Exchange and beyond those years. Each year he was responsible for preparing the holding company's annual accounts as well as its annual report. Throughout the 1960s the company's annual report, in which Harry took a special interest (he saw it as an important exercise in public relations, and not just the fulfilment of a statutory requirement), was a splendid document complete with glossy colour photographs of some of the company's beers ('Make Friends with Millers'), hotels, coal trucks ('R W Miller Washed Coals'), coal mines, coal and oil tankers and the like.
Harry resigned as company secretary of R W Miller (Holdings) Limited in late 1977. His resignation caused genuine consternation at Millers. The former Lady Miller (now Mrs Elizabeth [Betty] Aynsley-Cooke), in particular, expressed her sadness at Harry leaving the company and thanked him for all that he had done for both the company and her late husband.
THE HOWARD SMITH YEARS
In 1978 Harry became the assistant company secretary of Howard Smith Limited which had been established in 1854 by Captain William Howard Smith, who began transporting both people and supplies to the goldfields. Originally founded as William Howard Smith and Sons Pty Ltd, the company became Howard Smith Company Ltd in 1901 and in 1914 changed to Howard Smith Limited. In 1979 Millers became a subsidiary of Howard Smith and by 1985 was fully owned by that company. However, over the ensuing years ownership of Millers would change several times, with owners including corporate giants such as Atlantic Richfield and Rio Tinto. As for Howard Smith Limited, it was taken over by Wesfarmers Retail Pty Ltd in 2001.
Harry left Howard Smith Limited, and effectively ended his professional career, in May 1980 in order to stay home and attend to the needs of his seriously ailing wife Phyl.
BEREAVEMENT AND THEREAFTER
Phyl died of metastatic breast and bone cancer at Wahroonga, in metropolitan Sydney NSW, on November 12, 1981. (note. From 1958 to 1983 Phyl and Harry had lived with their son Ian in West Pymble, in metropolitan Sydney NSW. )
Although he had retired from full-time employment in May 1980, Harry worked part-time as a bookkeeper/accountant for a brief period in 1984 for the law firm of Richard Allen Davies, Solicitor and Conveyancer, at Eastwood NSW.
INTERESTS AND HOBBIES
During the late 1950s Harry served as treasurer of Gordon Nursery School [now Gordon Community Preschool] at Gordon, New South Wales, which his son Ian attended in 1958-59. For a while he was active in the Ku-ring-gai Orchid Society. He was a member of The Returned and Services League, Australia (RSL), a support organisation for men and women who have served or are serving in the Australian Defence Force. He was also for many years a member of the Sydney Cricket Ground, the North Sydney Anzac Memorial Club, and Drummoyne Sailing Club.
Harry was highly skilled in carpentry and joinery (making most of the furniture [all in Queen Anne style] in the family home) and in his later years he took up oil painting as a hobby and attended art classes. Other hobbies and interests over the years included orchid growing, gardening, philately, reading (especially British and Australian history and biography), music (especially Welsh choirs and military band music), family history, cycling, tennis, swimming, boxing, fishing, golf, football (mainly rugby union), cricket, jogging and walking.
Proud of his Welsh heritage, he loved all things Welsh, but especially its music and rugby team.
RELIGION
Christened an Anglican, Harry was a fellow traveller with Christianity at least as respects its moral and ethical content and the man Jesus. He believed in God and respected those who were religious—as well as those who weren't—but was agnostic as respect many religious claims and he rejected things that he regarded as being superstitious or irrational. In his final years, his two closest friends were devout Roman Catholics, but he would often say to them, as well as to his son Ian, that he couldn't understand how otherwise intelligent people could believe in doctrines and dogmas that he thought were downright silly. He would not argue about religion, for he saw that as being pointless, but that didn't stop him making the occasional crack about such Catholic dogmas as papal infallibility and the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.
One of his favourite books was The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Another book which had an influence for good on his life and thinking was Dale Carnegie's How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), in which the author said: '[T]he best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today's work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.' A Stoic at heart, Harry lived by those words.
POLITICS AND FRIENDS
Despite his humble working class family background Harry was politically conservative, always voting for the Liberal Party of Australia which for the most part is a conservative party. However, he had great respect for a number of trade union officials and politicians, both from the left and the right, with whom he interacted on a regular basis at Millers, most of all, Eliot V Elliott (1902-1984), the influential leader of the Seamen's Union of Australia from 1941 to 1978, who was a member of the Communist Party of Australia and later a founding member of the Socialist Party of Australia. In addition, Harry was a great admirer of Paul Robeson (1898-1976), the African American singer, actor and left-wing political activist.
Sir William (Billy) McMahon, Prime Minister of Australia from 1971-72, and E G (Gough) Whitlam (1916-2014), Prime Minister of Australia from 1972-75, were semi-regular visitors to the Millers head office in Scottish House, 17-19 Bridge Street, Sydney, and to Harry's office in particular, seeking generous political donations to their respective parties (Liberal and Australian Labor Party respectively). Harry was authorised by Sir Roderick Miller, who knew both politicians very well (among many others on all sides of politics), to write out cheques in the same amount to both parties and to give them to the men.
Harry's closest friends were two work colleagues from Millers, lawyer Bill Conway and executive Frank Murphy. Both were devout Roman Catholics (see 'Religion', above).
ILLNESSES AND DEATH
Persistent ill-health plagued Harry in his final years. Long days at work and almost constant stress at the crisis-prone Millers, exacerbated by the many rounds of legal proceedings in Australia and the United Kingdom, as well as many decades of smoking took their toll on his health and he visibly aged well before his time. In his later years he suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, and left-sided heart failure. He had a myocardial infarction in 1979 and thereafter suffered from ischaemic heart disease as well as transient ischaemic attacks.
Harry's final couple of years were spent for the most part in Eastwood, in metropolitan Sydney NSW, but during the last few months of his life, when not in hospital, he stayed at the Pymble home of his son Ian and daughter-in-law Elspeth (a nursing sister) and their young daughter Fiona. The latter attended to Harry's medical and other needs with great devotion.
In mid-1984 Harry was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer [undifferentiated large cell carcinoma] with brain metastases. Although very unwell, and increasingly so as the months went by, he typically bore his final illness with great stoicism. That was the way he had lived his life. His last words to his son Ian were, 'I'm at peace with everyone.'
Harry died of hypostatic pneumonia due to the cancer at Lady Davidson Hospital, North Turramurra, in metropolitan Sydney, on April 28, 1985 at the age of 65.
FUNERAL AND TRIBUTES
Harry's funeral, which took place in the North Chapel of the Northern Suburbs Crematorium, in North Ryde NSW, was officiated by a Baptist minister, The Reverend Bryan J Hoar, who had often visited Harry in his final years. The two had struck up a friendship and had mutual respect for each other. Harry was eulogized as a decent, honourable and hardworking man, a highly capable, reliable and trustworthy employee, and a good husband and father. His body was cremated and his ashes interred next to those of his late wife Phyl at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium Gardens. He was survived by his son Ian, a brother Lloyd and a half-sister Beryl.
Shortly after his death Harry's son Ian had this to say about his late father:
'As a husband he was ever loving and faithful. He worked so very hard so that my mother and I could live comfortably. He sacrificed his own happiness and pleasures for the sake of his family. He taught me the importance of hard work, dedication, persistence and attention to detail, and of doing your job well even when you did not feel like it. His final years, after the death of my mother, were spent largely in loneliness and terrible illness, yet he still thought of others and was very devoted to my wife and my young daughter. He was a sad man in many ways, and had suffered, but there was an inner goodness in him.'
Cymru Am Byth [Wales Forever]!
'The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.'
—Quatrain LI, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, as translated into English by Edward FitzGerald.
See also Find A Grave Memorials # 145072770 (Phyllis May "Phyl" Walsh Ellis-Jones), # 159604732 (Hilda May Trollope Pollard), # 157983588 (Victor Arthur Jones), # 158274526 (Violet Victoria Porter Jones), # 153906745 (John Victor 'Jacky' Jones), and # 135153728 (Lloyd Arthur Jones).
Note. This biographical profile was written by Dr Ian Ellis-Jones, of Sydney NSW Australia, who is the son of Henry Victor Ellis-Jones.
REFERENCE MATERIAL
Ellis-Jones, H V. Unpublished memoir, letters and other writings, family scrapbooks and miscellaneous records. nd. Collection of I D Ellis-Jones.
OCCUPATION
Accountant and company secretary.
INTRODUCTION
Henry Victor ('Harry') Ellis-Jones, an Australian accountant and company secretary, was born Henry Victor Jones on May 31, 1919, at 'York Cottage', The Parade, Dulwich Hill, Municipality of Marrickville, in metropolitan Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, to parents Victor Arthur and Violet Victoria (Porter) Jones.
His father Victor Arthur Jones (who died in 1952 aged 61) was a butcher by trade who for a time owned two butcher shops in and around Marrickville. Unfortunately, Vic lost both of his butcher shops during the Great Depression of the 1930s and was forced to become a rubber worker and later a cold room storeman for most of the remainder of his working life. He did, however, briefly help out in a butcher's shop in his later years whilst otherwise living in retirement at Minto, then a small town south-west of Sydney on the outskirts of Campbelltown which is now a regional city centre and the capital of the Macarthur region of New South Wales. At other times in his life Vic also worked as a milk vendor (his occupation at the time of Harry's birth), bread carter and rubber worker.
Harry's mother Violet Victoria (Porter) Jones was gifted in oil painting but was a somewhat troubled woman. Unhappy in her marriage, she sought solace in alcohol and eventually looked outside the marriage for fulfilment. On May 26, 1937, just 5 days before Harry's 18th birthday, she died in hospital from complications arising out of what proved to be an ultimately successful suicide attempt.
Despite humble and most difficult beginnings Harry excelled as an accountant and later as the chartered company secretary of one of Australia's biggest 100 companies.
ANCESTRY
Harry's ancestry was Australian, Welsh, English, Scottish, Irish and French Huguenot.
Harry's paternal great grandfather, Welsh-born William Ellis Jones (1826-1908) was a prominent colonial builder at Bathurst, in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales. William and his brother, the soon-to-be more well-known David Jones (1819-1899), who became a leading building contractor in Bathurst, settled in Bathurst in 1862. Together they worked on many important building projects including the Bathurst Court House, the Bathurst Railway Station, the Agricultural College, and Abercrombie House, as well as building several houses in the township of Bathurst. An active Methodist, William sang in the church choir at Bathurst for almost 40 years. He also constructed the pulpit and communion rail in that church (now Bathurst Uniting Church). David Jones also built the Goulburn Court House at Goulburn, New South Wales, which was Australia's first inland city.
The family of William Ellis Jones's wife, Elizabeth Haylock Coote (1826-1898), on the paternal side of her mother Madelaine Henrietta Vernezobre (1803-1883), were members of the prominent Huguenot (French Protestant) family, the Vernezobres. The Vernezobre family came from Villeveyrac (then also known as Villemagne), a commune in the Hérault department in what is now known as the Occitanie region in southern France and relocated to, among other places, England via Germany in the early 1700s to escape persecution and possibly death at the hands of French Catholics. Elizabeth Haylock Coote's maternal grandfather David John Vernezobre (1773-1823) was born in the (then) Dutch colony of Suriname, on the north-eastern Atlantic coast of South America, and his father Charles A Vernezobre (1724-1775) as well as his parents were born in Amsterdam, Holland. Other family members were born in Prussia and England, among other places. Interestingly, there was also a French Huguenot connection through Harry's paternal grandmother, Mary Elizabeth [also known as Elizabeth Mary or Minnie] Garde (1865-1886). The Garde family were also originally Huguenots.
A grandson of William Ellis Jones, Wilfred Walter Jones (1986-1915), who was a first cousin, once removed, of Harry, served in the Australian Imperial Force in World War I as a sapper. After enlisting on February 26, 1915, and landing at Gallipoli on September 3 of that year, he was killed in action there the very next month (on October 17, 1915) when he was apparently blown up by a demolition from a nearby Turkish tunnel. He is buried in Lone Pine Cemetery, a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in the former Anzac sector of the Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey.
Harry's maternal grandfather, English-born Alfred John Porter (1864/5-1939), was a seaman. He made his maiden voyage to Australia in the late 1870s as a deck boy on Devitt & Moore's famous passenger clipper 'Sobraon'—the largest composite-hull sailing vessel ever built—and he continued to serve on the 'Sobraon' for many years thereafter. The ship was later sold to the (then) colonial government of New South Wales for use as a reformatory ship before being sold to the Australian federal government, renamed HMAS Tingira, and used as a Royal Australian Navy training ship before finally being broken up in 1941. At the time of Porter's retirement at the age of 65 he was chief steward on the RMS Aorangi, his last vessel.
THE EARLY YEARS
Harry's early years were spent in Dulwich Hill, Sydenham, Earlwood and Drummoyne, in metropolitan Sydney, New South Wales. He was dux of the primary school at Earlwood Public School, Earlwood, in metropolitan Sydney NSW, and for a time was a student at Canterbury Boys' High School, at Canterbury, also in metropolitan Sydney NSW. He was a good student and also good at sport including rugby union, cycling and boxing.
Harry left school at age 13, and became an office boy, in order to support the family. (It was at the height of the Depression.)
A volume of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare was presented to Harry by the Police Association of New South Wales as an acknowledgment of the merit of an essay of his, on 'The Seven Ages of Man', which was published in Police News (January 1, 1933).
MILITARY SERVICE, CHANGE OF NAME AND MARRIAGE
Harry served in World War II, from 1940 to 1945 (rank at discharge: sergeant), in the Australian Imperial Force (Australian Army: posting at discharge—2/1 Australian Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment Signals), having also served in the Australian Militia prior to formal enlistment in the Australian Army. He served both in Australia and in the Middle East (Palestine and Syria), and almost died from lobar pneumonia while on service in 1943. The illness prevented him from securing further military promotion (relevantly, as a major) and undoubtedly contributed to the development of other medical conditions that were subsequently accepted as being service-related.
Harry changed his name by deed poll to Henry Victor Ellis-Jones on June 23, 1944. He had always been told by his father, uncle and others in the Jones family (including the Jones family historian Elizabeth Emily Fletcher Jones, his aunt) that the original family name back in Wales was 'Ellis-Jones'. Research has neither proved nor disproved that belief.
He married Phyllis May Walsh at Central Baptist Church in Sydney on August 26, 1944. Their son Ian David Ellis-Jones was born in Paddington NSW on March 3, 1955. Although Harry's parents had not enjoyed a happy married life together he and his wife Phyl would enjoy a very happy marriage for 37 years.
For many years—roughly from or about the time of his marriage until the early 1960s—Harry belonged to the friendly society and temperance promoting organisation The Independent Order of Rechabites and took advantage of its health fund. He would partake of alcohol thereafter but rarely to excess except in the last couple of years of his life when he was very depressed after the death of Phyl.
STUDIES AND EARLY CAREER
Harry studied accountancy by correspondence before World War II and after the War he became a fully qualified accountant with three separate accounting qualifications including one in cost accountancy. He successfully completed a post-graduate certificate course in the latter at Sydney Technical College in 1950.
Harry would later become a chartered company secretary as well, having passed the examinations of The Chartered Institute of Secretaries (London), Australian Branch, NSW Division in 1949. He secured 3rd place in the intermediate section of the examinations of the Institute. In time he became a Fellow of the Australian Society of Accountants and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries, and was appointed a Justice of the Peace in the State of New South Wales on October 28, 1964.
His professional career included employment at Forsters Products Pty Ltd (aka Forster and Co) [office boy/clerk] (from 1933 to 1936), Froscapt Refrigerating Cabinet Manufacturers [office boy/clerk] (from 1936 to 1940), L J Foster & Company Pty Limited [assistant accountant] (from 1945 to 1947), Rava (Sydney) Pty Ltd [accountant] (in 1947), W & T Avery (Australia) Pty Ltd [area accountant] (from 1947 to 1950), and H & E Crossan Pty Ltd [company secretary and accountant] (from 1950 to 1951).
THE R W MILLER YEARS
R W Miller & Co Pty Ltd was founded by mine and ship-owner Captain Robert William Miller (1879-1958) in 1919, the year of Harry's birth, although it seems he traded under the name R W Miller and Company from early 1912. Harry joined Millers in 1951, as an accountant at Millers Brewery Pty Limited and associate companies. Millers Brewery was formerly Briton's Brewery, and was located on Taverner's Hill at Petersham, in metropolitan Sydney, New South Wales. He stayed with Millers Brewery until 1957 when he left to work for Philips Electrical Industries Pty Limited as accountant (finance administration). He did not enjoy working at Philips, and so in 1960 he found his way back to Millers, and its head office (R W Miller & Co Pty Limited), as senior accountant.
In 1962 Harry became the founding secretary and public officer of the large and influential Australian public company R W Miller (Holdings) Limited, having been heavily involved in the company's public float. Over the years Millers had diverse interests in, among other things, coal mining, shipping, stevedoring, bulk haulage, oil transportation, hotels, hotel accessories, brewing, wine and spirit merchanting, butchering, engineering and insurance. The company soon became one of Australia's biggest 100 companies.
During the years Harry was company secretary of Millers (1962-77) the corporate conglomerate gained markets for its Hunter Valley, New South Wales coal in Victoria and South Australia, pioneered coal trade with Japan and later Europe, established a pioneering Australian tanker fleet to carry oil by building oil tankers and also converting other acquired ships into modern bulk carriers, and added road transport, insurance and engineering to its collieries and ships. At its peak the company had a financial interest in nearly 60 hotels as well loans totalling over $2 million to various licensed clubs whose events and activities were often generously sponsored by the company. The hotels were a cut above most pubs for the time; they had carpets (they were the first pubs in New South Wales to have carpeted public bars), pleasant surroundings and clean amenities, and were perhaps the first to introduce regular entertainment. During his time with Millers Harry was the licensee of a number of hotels owned by the company.
Harry was very much involved in the financial side of all these activities, and worked closely with Millers' formidable and larger-than-life managing director and chairman Roderick William (later Sir Roderick) Miller (1911-1971) who greatly admired Harry's honesty, loyalty, dedication, talent and hard work. Harry supported and helped facilitate Miller's twin goal of establishing an Australian oil tanker fleet and blunting the obscene influence and dominance of overseas monopolies in the shipping industry, while at all times warning Miller that the company was overextending itself financially and becoming increasingly vulnerable to takeover. Harry's attention to detail, while never losing sight of the larger picture, prevented many a disaster.
To achieve the above mentioned goals it was necessary to take on the Australian Government which was unduly protective of the foreign companies and their privileged position. Millers held out, and eventually prevailed. In early 1963 Millers bought and introduced the first Australian flag tanker onto the Australian coast ('Millers Canopus'). Before then, all Australian coastal tanker trade had been carried in foreign flag ships. After another year of wrangling with the Australian federal government, conditional approval was given to Millers in July 1964 to import two more tankers. The cost, both financial and human, was great for all concerned, but it was an immense victory for, above all, Australia.
Harry was company secretary of Millers, as well as its many subsidiaries, during all the years that the holding company was listed on the Sydney Stock Exchange and beyond those years. Each year he was responsible for preparing the holding company's annual accounts as well as its annual report. Throughout the 1960s the company's annual report, in which Harry took a special interest (he saw it as an important exercise in public relations, and not just the fulfilment of a statutory requirement), was a splendid document complete with glossy colour photographs of some of the company's beers ('Make Friends with Millers'), hotels, coal trucks ('R W Miller Washed Coals'), coal mines, coal and oil tankers and the like.
Harry resigned as company secretary of R W Miller (Holdings) Limited in late 1977. His resignation caused genuine consternation at Millers. The former Lady Miller (now Mrs Elizabeth [Betty] Aynsley-Cooke), in particular, expressed her sadness at Harry leaving the company and thanked him for all that he had done for both the company and her late husband.
THE HOWARD SMITH YEARS
In 1978 Harry became the assistant company secretary of Howard Smith Limited which had been established in 1854 by Captain William Howard Smith, who began transporting both people and supplies to the goldfields. Originally founded as William Howard Smith and Sons Pty Ltd, the company became Howard Smith Company Ltd in 1901 and in 1914 changed to Howard Smith Limited. In 1979 Millers became a subsidiary of Howard Smith and by 1985 was fully owned by that company. However, over the ensuing years ownership of Millers would change several times, with owners including corporate giants such as Atlantic Richfield and Rio Tinto. As for Howard Smith Limited, it was taken over by Wesfarmers Retail Pty Ltd in 2001.
Harry left Howard Smith Limited, and effectively ended his professional career, in May 1980 in order to stay home and attend to the needs of his seriously ailing wife Phyl.
BEREAVEMENT AND THEREAFTER
Phyl died of metastatic breast and bone cancer at Wahroonga, in metropolitan Sydney NSW, on November 12, 1981. (note. From 1958 to 1983 Phyl and Harry had lived with their son Ian in West Pymble, in metropolitan Sydney NSW. )
Although he had retired from full-time employment in May 1980, Harry worked part-time as a bookkeeper/accountant for a brief period in 1984 for the law firm of Richard Allen Davies, Solicitor and Conveyancer, at Eastwood NSW.
INTERESTS AND HOBBIES
During the late 1950s Harry served as treasurer of Gordon Nursery School [now Gordon Community Preschool] at Gordon, New South Wales, which his son Ian attended in 1958-59. For a while he was active in the Ku-ring-gai Orchid Society. He was a member of The Returned and Services League, Australia (RSL), a support organisation for men and women who have served or are serving in the Australian Defence Force. He was also for many years a member of the Sydney Cricket Ground, the North Sydney Anzac Memorial Club, and Drummoyne Sailing Club.
Harry was highly skilled in carpentry and joinery (making most of the furniture [all in Queen Anne style] in the family home) and in his later years he took up oil painting as a hobby and attended art classes. Other hobbies and interests over the years included orchid growing, gardening, philately, reading (especially British and Australian history and biography), music (especially Welsh choirs and military band music), family history, cycling, tennis, swimming, boxing, fishing, golf, football (mainly rugby union), cricket, jogging and walking.
Proud of his Welsh heritage, he loved all things Welsh, but especially its music and rugby team.
RELIGION
Christened an Anglican, Harry was a fellow traveller with Christianity at least as respects its moral and ethical content and the man Jesus. He believed in God and respected those who were religious—as well as those who weren't—but was agnostic as respect many religious claims and he rejected things that he regarded as being superstitious or irrational. In his final years, his two closest friends were devout Roman Catholics, but he would often say to them, as well as to his son Ian, that he couldn't understand how otherwise intelligent people could believe in doctrines and dogmas that he thought were downright silly. He would not argue about religion, for he saw that as being pointless, but that didn't stop him making the occasional crack about such Catholic dogmas as papal infallibility and the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.
One of his favourite books was The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Another book which had an influence for good on his life and thinking was Dale Carnegie's How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), in which the author said: '[T]he best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today's work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.' A Stoic at heart, Harry lived by those words.
POLITICS AND FRIENDS
Despite his humble working class family background Harry was politically conservative, always voting for the Liberal Party of Australia which for the most part is a conservative party. However, he had great respect for a number of trade union officials and politicians, both from the left and the right, with whom he interacted on a regular basis at Millers, most of all, Eliot V Elliott (1902-1984), the influential leader of the Seamen's Union of Australia from 1941 to 1978, who was a member of the Communist Party of Australia and later a founding member of the Socialist Party of Australia. In addition, Harry was a great admirer of Paul Robeson (1898-1976), the African American singer, actor and left-wing political activist.
Sir William (Billy) McMahon, Prime Minister of Australia from 1971-72, and E G (Gough) Whitlam (1916-2014), Prime Minister of Australia from 1972-75, were semi-regular visitors to the Millers head office in Scottish House, 17-19 Bridge Street, Sydney, and to Harry's office in particular, seeking generous political donations to their respective parties (Liberal and Australian Labor Party respectively). Harry was authorised by Sir Roderick Miller, who knew both politicians very well (among many others on all sides of politics), to write out cheques in the same amount to both parties and to give them to the men.
Harry's closest friends were two work colleagues from Millers, lawyer Bill Conway and executive Frank Murphy. Both were devout Roman Catholics (see 'Religion', above).
ILLNESSES AND DEATH
Persistent ill-health plagued Harry in his final years. Long days at work and almost constant stress at the crisis-prone Millers, exacerbated by the many rounds of legal proceedings in Australia and the United Kingdom, as well as many decades of smoking took their toll on his health and he visibly aged well before his time. In his later years he suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, and left-sided heart failure. He had a myocardial infarction in 1979 and thereafter suffered from ischaemic heart disease as well as transient ischaemic attacks.
Harry's final couple of years were spent for the most part in Eastwood, in metropolitan Sydney NSW, but during the last few months of his life, when not in hospital, he stayed at the Pymble home of his son Ian and daughter-in-law Elspeth (a nursing sister) and their young daughter Fiona. The latter attended to Harry's medical and other needs with great devotion.
In mid-1984 Harry was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer [undifferentiated large cell carcinoma] with brain metastases. Although very unwell, and increasingly so as the months went by, he typically bore his final illness with great stoicism. That was the way he had lived his life. His last words to his son Ian were, 'I'm at peace with everyone.'
Harry died of hypostatic pneumonia due to the cancer at Lady Davidson Hospital, North Turramurra, in metropolitan Sydney, on April 28, 1985 at the age of 65.
FUNERAL AND TRIBUTES
Harry's funeral, which took place in the North Chapel of the Northern Suburbs Crematorium, in North Ryde NSW, was officiated by a Baptist minister, The Reverend Bryan J Hoar, who had often visited Harry in his final years. The two had struck up a friendship and had mutual respect for each other. Harry was eulogized as a decent, honourable and hardworking man, a highly capable, reliable and trustworthy employee, and a good husband and father. His body was cremated and his ashes interred next to those of his late wife Phyl at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium Gardens. He was survived by his son Ian, a brother Lloyd and a half-sister Beryl.
Shortly after his death Harry's son Ian had this to say about his late father:
'As a husband he was ever loving and faithful. He worked so very hard so that my mother and I could live comfortably. He sacrificed his own happiness and pleasures for the sake of his family. He taught me the importance of hard work, dedication, persistence and attention to detail, and of doing your job well even when you did not feel like it. His final years, after the death of my mother, were spent largely in loneliness and terrible illness, yet he still thought of others and was very devoted to my wife and my young daughter. He was a sad man in many ways, and had suffered, but there was an inner goodness in him.'
Cymru Am Byth [Wales Forever]!
'The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.'
—Quatrain LI, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, as translated into English by Edward FitzGerald.
See also Find A Grave Memorials # 145072770 (Phyllis May "Phyl" Walsh Ellis-Jones), # 159604732 (Hilda May Trollope Pollard), # 157983588 (Victor Arthur Jones), # 158274526 (Violet Victoria Porter Jones), # 153906745 (John Victor 'Jacky' Jones), and # 135153728 (Lloyd Arthur Jones).
Note. This biographical profile was written by Dr Ian Ellis-Jones, of Sydney NSW Australia, who is the son of Henry Victor Ellis-Jones.
REFERENCE MATERIAL
Ellis-Jones, H V. Unpublished memoir, letters and other writings, family scrapbooks and miscellaneous records. nd. Collection of I D Ellis-Jones.
Accountant and company secretary.
INTRODUCTION
Henry Victor ('Harry') Ellis-Jones, an Australian accountant and company secretary, was born Henry Victor Jones on May 31, 1919, at 'York Cottage', The Parade, Dulwich Hill, Municipality of Marrickville, in metropolitan Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, to parents Victor Arthur and Violet Victoria (Porter) Jones.
His father Victor Arthur Jones (who died in 1952 aged 61) was a butcher by trade who for a time owned two butcher shops in and around Marrickville. Unfortunately, Vic lost both of his butcher shops during the Great Depression of the 1930s and was forced to become a rubber worker and later a cold room storeman for most of the remainder of his working life. He did, however, briefly help out in a butcher's shop in his later years whilst otherwise living in retirement at Minto, then a small town south-west of Sydney on the outskirts of Campbelltown which is now a regional city centre and the capital of the Macarthur region of New South Wales. At other times in his life Vic also worked as a milk vendor (his occupation at the time of Harry's birth), bread carter and rubber worker.
Harry's mother Violet Victoria (Porter) Jones was gifted in oil painting but was a somewhat troubled woman. Unhappy in her marriage, she sought solace in alcohol and eventually looked outside the marriage for fulfilment. On May 26, 1937, just 5 days before Harry's 18th birthday, she died in hospital from complications arising out of what proved to be an ultimately successful suicide attempt.
Despite humble and most difficult beginnings Harry excelled as an accountant and later as the chartered company secretary of one of Australia's biggest 100 companies.
ANCESTRY
Harry's ancestry was Australian, Welsh, English, Scottish, Irish and French Huguenot.
Harry's paternal great grandfather, Welsh-born William Ellis Jones (1826-1908) was a prominent colonial builder at Bathurst, in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales. William and his brother, the soon-to-be more well-known David Jones (1819-1899), who became a leading building contractor in Bathurst, settled in Bathurst in 1862. Together they worked on many important building projects including the Bathurst Court House, the Bathurst Railway Station, the Agricultural College, and Abercrombie House, as well as building several houses in the township of Bathurst. An active Methodist, William sang in the church choir at Bathurst for almost 40 years. He also constructed the pulpit and communion rail in that church (now Bathurst Uniting Church). David Jones also built the Goulburn Court House at Goulburn, New South Wales, which was Australia's first inland city.
The family of William Ellis Jones's wife, Elizabeth Haylock Coote (1826-1898), on the paternal side of her mother Madelaine Henrietta Vernezobre (1803-1883), were members of the prominent Huguenot (French Protestant) family, the Vernezobres. The Vernezobre family came from Villeveyrac (then also known as Villemagne), a commune in the Hérault department in what is now known as the Occitanie region in southern France and relocated to, among other places, England via Germany in the early 1700s to escape persecution and possibly death at the hands of French Catholics. Elizabeth Haylock Coote's maternal grandfather David John Vernezobre (1773-1823) was born in the (then) Dutch colony of Suriname, on the north-eastern Atlantic coast of South America, and his father Charles A Vernezobre (1724-1775) as well as his parents were born in Amsterdam, Holland. Other family members were born in Prussia and England, among other places. Interestingly, there was also a French Huguenot connection through Harry's paternal grandmother, Mary Elizabeth [also known as Elizabeth Mary or Minnie] Garde (1865-1886). The Garde family were also originally Huguenots.
A grandson of William Ellis Jones, Wilfred Walter Jones (1986-1915), who was a first cousin, once removed, of Harry, served in the Australian Imperial Force in World War I as a sapper. After enlisting on February 26, 1915, and landing at Gallipoli on September 3 of that year, he was killed in action there the very next month (on October 17, 1915) when he was apparently blown up by a demolition from a nearby Turkish tunnel. He is buried in Lone Pine Cemetery, a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in the former Anzac sector of the Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey.
Harry's maternal grandfather, English-born Alfred John Porter (1864/5-1939), was a seaman. He made his maiden voyage to Australia in the late 1870s as a deck boy on Devitt & Moore's famous passenger clipper 'Sobraon'—the largest composite-hull sailing vessel ever built—and he continued to serve on the 'Sobraon' for many years thereafter. The ship was later sold to the (then) colonial government of New South Wales for use as a reformatory ship before being sold to the Australian federal government, renamed HMAS Tingira, and used as a Royal Australian Navy training ship before finally being broken up in 1941. At the time of Porter's retirement at the age of 65 he was chief steward on the RMS Aorangi, his last vessel.
THE EARLY YEARS
Harry's early years were spent in Dulwich Hill, Sydenham, Earlwood and Drummoyne, in metropolitan Sydney, New South Wales. He was dux of the primary school at Earlwood Public School, Earlwood, in metropolitan Sydney NSW, and for a time was a student at Canterbury Boys' High School, at Canterbury, also in metropolitan Sydney NSW. He was a good student and also good at sport including rugby union, cycling and boxing.
Harry left school at age 13, and became an office boy, in order to support the family. (It was at the height of the Depression.)
A volume of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare was presented to Harry by the Police Association of New South Wales as an acknowledgment of the merit of an essay of his, on 'The Seven Ages of Man', which was published in Police News (January 1, 1933).
MILITARY SERVICE, CHANGE OF NAME AND MARRIAGE
Harry served in World War II, from 1940 to 1945 (rank at discharge: sergeant), in the Australian Imperial Force (Australian Army: posting at discharge—2/1 Australian Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment Signals), having also served in the Australian Militia prior to formal enlistment in the Australian Army. He served both in Australia and in the Middle East (Palestine and Syria), and almost died from lobar pneumonia while on service in 1943. The illness prevented him from securing further military promotion (relevantly, as a major) and undoubtedly contributed to the development of other medical conditions that were subsequently accepted as being service-related.
Harry changed his name by deed poll to Henry Victor Ellis-Jones on June 23, 1944. He had always been told by his father, uncle and others in the Jones family (including the Jones family historian Elizabeth Emily Fletcher Jones, his aunt) that the original family name back in Wales was 'Ellis-Jones'. Research has neither proved nor disproved that belief.
He married Phyllis May Walsh at Central Baptist Church in Sydney on August 26, 1944. Their son Ian David Ellis-Jones was born in Paddington NSW on March 3, 1955. Although Harry's parents had not enjoyed a happy married life together he and his wife Phyl would enjoy a very happy marriage for 37 years.
For many years—roughly from or about the time of his marriage until the early 1960s—Harry belonged to the friendly society and temperance promoting organisation The Independent Order of Rechabites and took advantage of its health fund. He would partake of alcohol thereafter but rarely to excess except in the last couple of years of his life when he was very depressed after the death of Phyl.
STUDIES AND EARLY CAREER
Harry studied accountancy by correspondence before World War II and after the War he became a fully qualified accountant with three separate accounting qualifications including one in cost accountancy. He successfully completed a post-graduate certificate course in the latter at Sydney Technical College in 1950.
Harry would later become a chartered company secretary as well, having passed the examinations of The Chartered Institute of Secretaries (London), Australian Branch, NSW Division in 1949. He secured 3rd place in the intermediate section of the examinations of the Institute. In time he became a Fellow of the Australian Society of Accountants and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries, and was appointed a Justice of the Peace in the State of New South Wales on October 28, 1964.
His professional career included employment at Forsters Products Pty Ltd (aka Forster and Co) [office boy/clerk] (from 1933 to 1936), Froscapt Refrigerating Cabinet Manufacturers [office boy/clerk] (from 1936 to 1940), L J Foster & Company Pty Limited [assistant accountant] (from 1945 to 1947), Rava (Sydney) Pty Ltd [accountant] (in 1947), W & T Avery (Australia) Pty Ltd [area accountant] (from 1947 to 1950), and H & E Crossan Pty Ltd [company secretary and accountant] (from 1950 to 1951).
THE R W MILLER YEARS
R W Miller & Co Pty Ltd was founded by mine and ship-owner Captain Robert William Miller (1879-1958) in 1919, the year of Harry's birth, although it seems he traded under the name R W Miller and Company from early 1912. Harry joined Millers in 1951, as an accountant at Millers Brewery Pty Limited and associate companies. Millers Brewery was formerly Briton's Brewery, and was located on Taverner's Hill at Petersham, in metropolitan Sydney, New South Wales. He stayed with Millers Brewery until 1957 when he left to work for Philips Electrical Industries Pty Limited as accountant (finance administration). He did not enjoy working at Philips, and so in 1960 he found his way back to Millers, and its head office (R W Miller & Co Pty Limited), as senior accountant.
In 1962 Harry became the founding secretary and public officer of the large and influential Australian public company R W Miller (Holdings) Limited, having been heavily involved in the company's public float. Over the years Millers had diverse interests in, among other things, coal mining, shipping, stevedoring, bulk haulage, oil transportation, hotels, hotel accessories, brewing, wine and spirit merchanting, butchering, engineering and insurance. The company soon became one of Australia's biggest 100 companies.
During the years Harry was company secretary of Millers (1962-77) the corporate conglomerate gained markets for its Hunter Valley, New South Wales coal in Victoria and South Australia, pioneered coal trade with Japan and later Europe, established a pioneering Australian tanker fleet to carry oil by building oil tankers and also converting other acquired ships into modern bulk carriers, and added road transport, insurance and engineering to its collieries and ships. At its peak the company had a financial interest in nearly 60 hotels as well loans totalling over $2 million to various licensed clubs whose events and activities were often generously sponsored by the company. The hotels were a cut above most pubs for the time; they had carpets (they were the first pubs in New South Wales to have carpeted public bars), pleasant surroundings and clean amenities, and were perhaps the first to introduce regular entertainment. During his time with Millers Harry was the licensee of a number of hotels owned by the company.
Harry was very much involved in the financial side of all these activities, and worked closely with Millers' formidable and larger-than-life managing director and chairman Roderick William (later Sir Roderick) Miller (1911-1971) who greatly admired Harry's honesty, loyalty, dedication, talent and hard work. Harry supported and helped facilitate Miller's twin goal of establishing an Australian oil tanker fleet and blunting the obscene influence and dominance of overseas monopolies in the shipping industry, while at all times warning Miller that the company was overextending itself financially and becoming increasingly vulnerable to takeover. Harry's attention to detail, while never losing sight of the larger picture, prevented many a disaster.
To achieve the above mentioned goals it was necessary to take on the Australian Government which was unduly protective of the foreign companies and their privileged position. Millers held out, and eventually prevailed. In early 1963 Millers bought and introduced the first Australian flag tanker onto the Australian coast ('Millers Canopus'). Before then, all Australian coastal tanker trade had been carried in foreign flag ships. After another year of wrangling with the Australian federal government, conditional approval was given to Millers in July 1964 to import two more tankers. The cost, both financial and human, was great for all concerned, but it was an immense victory for, above all, Australia.
Harry was company secretary of Millers, as well as its many subsidiaries, during all the years that the holding company was listed on the Sydney Stock Exchange and beyond those years. Each year he was responsible for preparing the holding company's annual accounts as well as its annual report. Throughout the 1960s the company's annual report, in which Harry took a special interest (he saw it as an important exercise in public relations, and not just the fulfilment of a statutory requirement), was a splendid document complete with glossy colour photographs of some of the company's beers ('Make Friends with Millers'), hotels, coal trucks ('R W Miller Washed Coals'), coal mines, coal and oil tankers and the like.
Harry resigned as company secretary of R W Miller (Holdings) Limited in late 1977. His resignation caused genuine consternation at Millers. The former Lady Miller (now Mrs Elizabeth [Betty] Aynsley-Cooke), in particular, expressed her sadness at Harry leaving the company and thanked him for all that he had done for both the company and her late husband.
THE HOWARD SMITH YEARS
In 1978 Harry became the assistant company secretary of Howard Smith Limited which had been established in 1854 by Captain William Howard Smith, who began transporting both people and supplies to the goldfields. Originally founded as William Howard Smith and Sons Pty Ltd, the company became Howard Smith Company Ltd in 1901 and in 1914 changed to Howard Smith Limited. In 1979 Millers became a subsidiary of Howard Smith and by 1985 was fully owned by that company. However, over the ensuing years ownership of Millers would change several times, with owners including corporate giants such as Atlantic Richfield and Rio Tinto. As for Howard Smith Limited, it was taken over by Wesfarmers Retail Pty Ltd in 2001.
Harry left Howard Smith Limited, and effectively ended his professional career, in May 1980 in order to stay home and attend to the needs of his seriously ailing wife Phyl.
BEREAVEMENT AND THEREAFTER
Phyl died of metastatic breast and bone cancer at Wahroonga, in metropolitan Sydney NSW, on November 12, 1981. (note. From 1958 to 1983 Phyl and Harry had lived with their son Ian in West Pymble, in metropolitan Sydney NSW. )
Although he had retired from full-time employment in May 1980, Harry worked part-time as a bookkeeper/accountant for a brief period in 1984 for the law firm of Richard Allen Davies, Solicitor and Conveyancer, at Eastwood NSW.
INTERESTS AND HOBBIES
During the late 1950s Harry served as treasurer of Gordon Nursery School [now Gordon Community Preschool] at Gordon, New South Wales, which his son Ian attended in 1958-59. For a while he was active in the Ku-ring-gai Orchid Society. He was a member of The Returned and Services League, Australia (RSL), a support organisation for men and women who have served or are serving in the Australian Defence Force. He was also for many years a member of the Sydney Cricket Ground, the North Sydney Anzac Memorial Club, and Drummoyne Sailing Club.
Harry was highly skilled in carpentry and joinery (making most of the furniture [all in Queen Anne style] in the family home) and in his later years he took up oil painting as a hobby and attended art classes. Other hobbies and interests over the years included orchid growing, gardening, philately, reading (especially British and Australian history and biography), music (especially Welsh choirs and military band music), family history, cycling, tennis, swimming, boxing, fishing, golf, football (mainly rugby union), cricket, jogging and walking.
Proud of his Welsh heritage, he loved all things Welsh, but especially its music and rugby team.
RELIGION
Christened an Anglican, Harry was a fellow traveller with Christianity at least as respects its moral and ethical content and the man Jesus. He believed in God and respected those who were religious—as well as those who weren't—but was agnostic as respect many religious claims and he rejected things that he regarded as being superstitious or irrational. In his final years, his two closest friends were devout Roman Catholics, but he would often say to them, as well as to his son Ian, that he couldn't understand how otherwise intelligent people could believe in doctrines and dogmas that he thought were downright silly. He would not argue about religion, for he saw that as being pointless, but that didn't stop him making the occasional crack about such Catholic dogmas as papal infallibility and the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.
One of his favourite books was The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Another book which had an influence for good on his life and thinking was Dale Carnegie's How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), in which the author said: '[T]he best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today's work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.' A Stoic at heart, Harry lived by those words.
POLITICS AND FRIENDS
Despite his humble working class family background Harry was politically conservative, always voting for the Liberal Party of Australia which for the most part is a conservative party. However, he had great respect for a number of trade union officials and politicians, both from the left and the right, with whom he interacted on a regular basis at Millers, most of all, Eliot V Elliott (1902-1984), the influential leader of the Seamen's Union of Australia from 1941 to 1978, who was a member of the Communist Party of Australia and later a founding member of the Socialist Party of Australia. In addition, Harry was a great admirer of Paul Robeson (1898-1976), the African American singer, actor and left-wing political activist.
Sir William (Billy) McMahon, Prime Minister of Australia from 1971-72, and E G (Gough) Whitlam (1916-2014), Prime Minister of Australia from 1972-75, were semi-regular visitors to the Millers head office in Scottish House, 17-19 Bridge Street, Sydney, and to Harry's office in particular, seeking generous political donations to their respective parties (Liberal and Australian Labor Party respectively). Harry was authorised by Sir Roderick Miller, who knew both politicians very well (among many others on all sides of politics), to write out cheques in the same amount to both parties and to give them to the men.
Harry's closest friends were two work colleagues from Millers, lawyer Bill Conway and executive Frank Murphy. Both were devout Roman Catholics (see 'Religion', above).
ILLNESSES AND DEATH
Persistent ill-health plagued Harry in his final years. Long days at work and almost constant stress at the crisis-prone Millers, exacerbated by the many rounds of legal proceedings in Australia and the United Kingdom, as well as many decades of smoking took their toll on his health and he visibly aged well before his time. In his later years he suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, and left-sided heart failure. He had a myocardial infarction in 1979 and thereafter suffered from ischaemic heart disease as well as transient ischaemic attacks.
Harry's final couple of years were spent for the most part in Eastwood, in metropolitan Sydney NSW, but during the last few months of his life, when not in hospital, he stayed at the Pymble home of his son Ian and daughter-in-law Elspeth (a nursing sister) and their young daughter Fiona. The latter attended to Harry's medical and other needs with great devotion.
In mid-1984 Harry was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer [undifferentiated large cell carcinoma] with brain metastases. Although very unwell, and increasingly so as the months went by, he typically bore his final illness with great stoicism. That was the way he had lived his life. His last words to his son Ian were, 'I'm at peace with everyone.'
Harry died of hypostatic pneumonia due to the cancer at Lady Davidson Hospital, North Turramurra, in metropolitan Sydney, on April 28, 1985 at the age of 65.
FUNERAL AND TRIBUTES
Harry's funeral, which took place in the North Chapel of the Northern Suburbs Crematorium, in North Ryde NSW, was officiated by a Baptist minister, The Reverend Bryan J Hoar, who had often visited Harry in his final years. The two had struck up a friendship and had mutual respect for each other. Harry was eulogized as a decent, honourable and hardworking man, a highly capable, reliable and trustworthy employee, and a good husband and father. His body was cremated and his ashes interred next to those of his late wife Phyl at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium Gardens. He was survived by his son Ian, a brother Lloyd and a half-sister Beryl.
Shortly after his death Harry's son Ian had this to say about his late father:
'As a husband he was ever loving and faithful. He worked so very hard so that my mother and I could live comfortably. He sacrificed his own happiness and pleasures for the sake of his family. He taught me the importance of hard work, dedication, persistence and attention to detail, and of doing your job well even when you did not feel like it. His final years, after the death of my mother, were spent largely in loneliness and terrible illness, yet he still thought of others and was very devoted to my wife and my young daughter. He was a sad man in many ways, and had suffered, but there was an inner goodness in him.'
Cymru Am Byth [Wales Forever]!
'The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.'
—Quatrain LI, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, as translated into English by Edward FitzGerald.
See also Find A Grave Memorials # 145072770 (Phyllis May "Phyl" Walsh Ellis-Jones), # 159604732 (Hilda May Trollope Pollard), # 157983588 (Victor Arthur Jones), # 158274526 (Violet Victoria Porter Jones), # 153906745 (John Victor 'Jacky' Jones), and # 135153728 (Lloyd Arthur Jones).
Note. This biographical profile was written by Dr Ian Ellis-Jones, of Sydney NSW Australia, who is the son of Henry Victor Ellis-Jones.
REFERENCE MATERIAL
Ellis-Jones, H V. Unpublished memoir, letters and other writings, family scrapbooks and miscellaneous records. nd. Collection of I D Ellis-Jones.
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