1904943
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Bryant, Percy James
Description
Unique IDPE-004719SurnameBryantGiven namesPercy JamesAlternative nameSamBirth date19th June 1904Birth date qualifierexactPlace of birthAuckland, New ZealandDeath date25th May 1988Death date qualifierexactBiographical noteThe following biography was contributed by Bryant's grandson, Christopher Lloyd:
Percy James (Sam) Bryant 1904 to 1988
Percy (Sam) James Bryant was born 1904 in Auckland, New Zealand, the eldest of Alice Isabella Bryant’s four children. Isabella contracted tuberculosis and was sent to Garrawarra Sanatorium where she died in the mid-1920s. Percy’s brother and sisters were sent into the care of Mrs. Brown in Guildford while Percy went to work in the market gardens up near Windsor to support them. Each Sunday he would make his way to Guildford a dapper little teenager in his boater and tie to play with his siblings in the bush along the Georges River.
Percy was called ‘Sam’ all his life to distinguish himself from his uncle Perc who was something of a hero and guardian to him in his early life. Perc McGinnes was the last Australian master of both sail and steam ships and often in Sydney between voyages to New Zealand, South America and China as well the Australian coastal trade in barques such as the Daniel or the Hazel Craig.
Sam married Mary Russell from Bathurst in 1925 and they moved to rented accommodation in Paddington and he soon moved his brothers and sisters under the same roof. They shifted to Cascade Street Paddington shortly after the birth of their first child Alice in 1925 and stayed there until they moved to Matraville in 1942. Through the 1920s and 30s every square inch of that Paddington rented terrace that could be incoming generating was pushed into service. Boarders and sewing were taken in, vegetables grown in collected horse dung, furniture made from discards, you name it Sam and Mary, like the rest of their neighbours, did what they could to survive the depression.
To this day Sam’s daughter Alice remembers the sense of community self-help that led Jewish tailors to swap food for clothes or Chinese gardeners to slip people vegetables when things were desperate. Paddington may have been poor but most of its polyglot population looked out for each other. The arrival of the first refugees from the unfolding, but for working Australians largely unknown, horror of Nazi Germany’s campaign against the Jews, Gypsies and others brought a whole new dynamic. Sam’s children were able to getting dancing lessons direct from the salons of Vienna or peer into the new cafes where the languages were a jumble of unknown syllables and the food seemed otherworldly.
Sammy Bryant would do virtually any job to support his extended family but finally settled into the railways just prior to the depression. He played reserve and first grade football for his beloved Easts and boxed to earn a quid on the side. Once in railways he joined the electric light shop whose main task at that stage was replacing the old gas pipes with electrical wiring. He always had an interest in photography but for most of his early life he never had the income to explore the medium as a hobby. With the arrival of cheaper cameras and regular employment Sam began taking photographs.
Wiring stations on the Illawarra and Western Lines provided opportunities to photograph life as well as spend time with his in-laws in Bathurst. Mary’s family were Scots immigrants who had settled on the sheep country south of Bathurst and the family seat was a rambling wattle and daub collection called ‘Rubyvale’ right in the middle of what is now the Chifley Dam. For Sam it was a paradise of extended family and rural self-sufficiency albeit dirt poor.
Sam loved Sydney’s Harbour and perhaps through uncle Perc influence he loved to photograph the vessels that used. His opportunities to photograph Sydney’s centrepiece increased dramatically when the Light Shop moved its attention to wiring the brand new Sydney Harbour Bridge. When his daughter Alice was old enough to work she started with the Berlei factory in Railway Square. At fourteen she got a double on Sam bicycle as the Electric Light Shop was in Railway Square. Sam taught Alice to use a mirror from the fourth floor, where she picked threads from ladies underwear, to signal in Morse to Sam so they could for their lunch breaks on the lawns of the Mortuary Station.
Sam’s photographs reflected his two geographic passions, the City of Sydney and its harbour and the undulating country of Mary’s family selection south of Bathurst. He maintained his photographic habit through his eye for a quid and his mate the Ernie Best who owned a small photographic business in the eastern suburbs. Some of his subjects seem somewhat odd at first. Why would you go out of your way to photograph the Japanese whaling fleet or Count von Luckner’s yacht? Sam had little formal education to speak of but he was a fanatic reader of whatever he could get and in his working class world that did not just mean the tabloid press. Through the railway unions and the Paddington community there was also a fair supply of alternative press and it was often through this he was alert to controversies such von Luckner’s visit or the significance of Japanese vessels in the late 1930s.
The family would never have left Paddington if it hadn’t been for the double-edged sword of a motorcycle accident. In one collision with a Mercedes Benz, and most particularly it pointed star mascot, he lost his football career and any further children. However the subsequent court ordered compensation was enough for he and his builder mate Vic Martin, to put up a brick bungalow in sandy fields of Beauchamp Road Matraville. Soon surrounded by the petrochemical complex of ICI and the oil terminals of Golden Fleece and Caltex and the new Boral oil refinery, Sam and Mary lived the rest of the lives in this house dying within months of each other. They were cremated at Botany and their ashes scattered on the ground of the old Rubyvale Homestead near Lagoon. GenderMale
Percy James (Sam) Bryant 1904 to 1988
Percy (Sam) James Bryant was born 1904 in Auckland, New Zealand, the eldest of Alice Isabella Bryant’s four children. Isabella contracted tuberculosis and was sent to Garrawarra Sanatorium where she died in the mid-1920s. Percy’s brother and sisters were sent into the care of Mrs. Brown in Guildford while Percy went to work in the market gardens up near Windsor to support them. Each Sunday he would make his way to Guildford a dapper little teenager in his boater and tie to play with his siblings in the bush along the Georges River.
Percy was called ‘Sam’ all his life to distinguish himself from his uncle Perc who was something of a hero and guardian to him in his early life. Perc McGinnes was the last Australian master of both sail and steam ships and often in Sydney between voyages to New Zealand, South America and China as well the Australian coastal trade in barques such as the Daniel or the Hazel Craig.
Sam married Mary Russell from Bathurst in 1925 and they moved to rented accommodation in Paddington and he soon moved his brothers and sisters under the same roof. They shifted to Cascade Street Paddington shortly after the birth of their first child Alice in 1925 and stayed there until they moved to Matraville in 1942. Through the 1920s and 30s every square inch of that Paddington rented terrace that could be incoming generating was pushed into service. Boarders and sewing were taken in, vegetables grown in collected horse dung, furniture made from discards, you name it Sam and Mary, like the rest of their neighbours, did what they could to survive the depression.
To this day Sam’s daughter Alice remembers the sense of community self-help that led Jewish tailors to swap food for clothes or Chinese gardeners to slip people vegetables when things were desperate. Paddington may have been poor but most of its polyglot population looked out for each other. The arrival of the first refugees from the unfolding, but for working Australians largely unknown, horror of Nazi Germany’s campaign against the Jews, Gypsies and others brought a whole new dynamic. Sam’s children were able to getting dancing lessons direct from the salons of Vienna or peer into the new cafes where the languages were a jumble of unknown syllables and the food seemed otherworldly.
Sammy Bryant would do virtually any job to support his extended family but finally settled into the railways just prior to the depression. He played reserve and first grade football for his beloved Easts and boxed to earn a quid on the side. Once in railways he joined the electric light shop whose main task at that stage was replacing the old gas pipes with electrical wiring. He always had an interest in photography but for most of his early life he never had the income to explore the medium as a hobby. With the arrival of cheaper cameras and regular employment Sam began taking photographs.
Wiring stations on the Illawarra and Western Lines provided opportunities to photograph life as well as spend time with his in-laws in Bathurst. Mary’s family were Scots immigrants who had settled on the sheep country south of Bathurst and the family seat was a rambling wattle and daub collection called ‘Rubyvale’ right in the middle of what is now the Chifley Dam. For Sam it was a paradise of extended family and rural self-sufficiency albeit dirt poor.
Sam loved Sydney’s Harbour and perhaps through uncle Perc influence he loved to photograph the vessels that used. His opportunities to photograph Sydney’s centrepiece increased dramatically when the Light Shop moved its attention to wiring the brand new Sydney Harbour Bridge. When his daughter Alice was old enough to work she started with the Berlei factory in Railway Square. At fourteen she got a double on Sam bicycle as the Electric Light Shop was in Railway Square. Sam taught Alice to use a mirror from the fourth floor, where she picked threads from ladies underwear, to signal in Morse to Sam so they could for their lunch breaks on the lawns of the Mortuary Station.
Sam’s photographs reflected his two geographic passions, the City of Sydney and its harbour and the undulating country of Mary’s family selection south of Bathurst. He maintained his photographic habit through his eye for a quid and his mate the Ernie Best who owned a small photographic business in the eastern suburbs. Some of his subjects seem somewhat odd at first. Why would you go out of your way to photograph the Japanese whaling fleet or Count von Luckner’s yacht? Sam had little formal education to speak of but he was a fanatic reader of whatever he could get and in his working class world that did not just mean the tabloid press. Through the railway unions and the Paddington community there was also a fair supply of alternative press and it was often through this he was alert to controversies such von Luckner’s visit or the significance of Japanese vessels in the late 1930s.
The family would never have left Paddington if it hadn’t been for the double-edged sword of a motorcycle accident. In one collision with a Mercedes Benz, and most particularly it pointed star mascot, he lost his football career and any further children. However the subsequent court ordered compensation was enough for he and his builder mate Vic Martin, to put up a brick bungalow in sandy fields of Beauchamp Road Matraville. Soon surrounded by the petrochemical complex of ICI and the oil terminals of Golden Fleece and Caltex and the new Boral oil refinery, Sam and Mary lived the rest of the lives in this house dying within months of each other. They were cremated at Botany and their ashes scattered on the ground of the old Rubyvale Homestead near Lagoon. GenderMale
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Bryant, Percy James [PE-004719]. City of Sydney Archives, accessed 26 Apr 2024, https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/1904943