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100th birthday in 1929.
Richard Honeycombe died of senility and heart failure at his home in Albert Street, Footscray,
on 7 July 1925. He was 95 and 10 months old.
He had travelled far from his birthplace in Devon in 1829. He had fathered nine children, four of
whom were sons whose descendants would bear
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his name in Victoria and South Africa to this day. He had seen great and amazing technical and
mechanical advances; he had seen towns and cities spread and grow - and some of their stones
he had made himself. He had witnessed the coming of steamships, of railways, of macadamized
roads, of motor cars, of electric light, of telegraphs, telephones, the movies and radio, of
bathrooms with hot water, toilet and bath, of a thousand other conveniences that we take for
granted today. And he had seen the birth of a nation, with all its attendant wonders, woe and
joy.
The inscription on the family gravestone in Melbourne Cemetery says, correctly, that he was 'in
his 96th year'. Most of the newspapers that recorded his demise said he was 96. All referred to
him as an 'Eight Hours Pioneer'. The Herald said: 'Although Mr Honeycombe did not walk in
the original Eight Hours' Procession, he was one of the early supporters of the movement, and in
late years he and Mr Wardley, the veteran president of the Bakers' Union, aged 108, were
given the place of honour in the Eight Hours' Day celebrations.
The Argus said: The death of Mr R Honeycombe, an old and esteemed member of the
Operative Masons' Society, yesterday, at the advanced age of 96 years, removed one of the
last pioneers of the Eight Hours movement. In recent years, Mr Honeycombe and Mr Wardley,
ex-president of the Operative Bakers' Society, who will be 108 years of age in October next,
occupied the place of honour in the annual Eight Hours procession. Some years have elapsed
since the last of the founders of the movement passed away, and though the names of Messrs
Honeycombe and Wardley are not enrolled on the scroll of honour at the Trades Hall, they are
regarded as the last of the pioneers who played a prominent part in the early struggles of the
industrial movement.'
The funeral cortege left 76 Albert Street at 3.30pm on the 8 July and proceeded to the
Melbourne General Cemetery, attended by Jane (now 77), and Jack (now 63); and by his
married daughters, Mrs Regelsen, Mrs Steel and Mrs Allen and their families; and possibly by
Fanny and her family, and the widows of his sons, Thomas and George. He was buried in the
Methodist section of the cemetery, beside his daughter Emma and his wife. Jane would join
them in 1934, dying of a strangulated hernia and toxaemia when she was 85.
In the meantime, Jane continued to live in the house in Albert Street. Aunt Lil said of her: 'She
used to be a housekeeper for some photographer in the city. But when her mother and father
got too old, she left her job and came to Albert Street to look after them, the two of them, until
they both died. After her father died she had a housekeeper as a companion who used to live
in." And Arthur said: 'Jane was a very kindly person, a gentle person. There used to be a great
almond tree in the backyard of Albert Street, and Uncle Jack used to go down and pick the
almonds for Auntie Jane. She used to worry about the almonds falling in the yard. She was very
old then. I'd be about four or five... The house isn't there now. The Tramway Board pulled it
down and built a yard for their buses. But there's a bit of the old bluestone wall along the street.
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