Thomas Saywell (1837–1928) was an English-born tobacco manufacturer, property developer, mine owner, and business person in New South Wales, Australia. He is particularly associated with the Sydney suburb of Brighton-le-Sands and the coal mines of Lithgow and the Southern Coalfields. He holds the dubious distinction of manufacturing the first Australian-made cigarettes.
Early life
Family background and early life The Saywell family name was originally Seyuille, at the time when their Huguenot ancestors fled to England in 1604. The family had been lacemakers in France and Flanders. Eventually settling in Nottingham, they pursued lace-making there.
Thomas Richard Saywell was born on 20 February 1837, in Radford, Nottingham. His mother died while he was an infant and his father remarried.
Thomas Saywell's father, George, was an expert in setting up steam-driven mechanical lace-making machines. After the lace trade in Nottingham fell into decline, George, his brother and their families moved to France, in 1841. By 1842, they had settled in the village of Saint-Pierre-lès-Calais, now referred to as the Quartier Saint-Pierre of Calais. Thomas was sent to a local Catholic school there, and as a result was fluently bilingual in French and English.
Emigration to New South Wales Economic conditions in France and the revolution of 1848, left the Saywell family and other English workers in France in a precarious position. With scant prospects at home in England, the workers petitioned the English government to assist them to migrate to a British colony. The Saywell family arrived in Sydney aboard Agincourt on 6 October 1848.
First years in New South Wales Initially unable to take their savings out of France, the Saywell family faced poverty. George Saywell became a carrier, with two bullock teams and some horses and carted coal, but within a year or so had a small piece of land and a share in a coal mine. For a time, George ran a hotel at Maitland. Thomas was working there as a tobacco twister in 1852. He spent some time on the goldfields, not as a miner but assisting his uncle to run a paid lending library.
Thomas Saywell married Annie Ellen Fawcett (1839–1905), daughter of a Balmain stonemason, in 1862. He opened a tobacconist's shop in Park Street, Sydney, in 1863.
Entrepreneur Thomas Saywell expanded his tobacco business and became an entrepreneur. He did so by mutually-beneficial partnerships and astute investments. He also became a major landholder and land developer.
Tobacco manufacturing Thomas Saywell tobacconist's operation grew, in 1870, when he bought plant and machinery of the Eagle Tobacco Factory and installed it in his shop at 4 Park Street. Thereafter he used the brand name 'Eagle'. In 1874, he bought another tobacconists business from Edwin Penfold, whose son, William Clark Penfold, later became a well-known Sydney printer and stationer. In February 1873, Saywell bought land on Clarence Street, Sydney, and over the next two years built a tobacco factory there. Saywell has the dubious distinction of being the manufacturer of the first Australian-made cigarettes. He was an advocate of protection of the local tobacco industry.
In 1882, a publicly listed company Saywell's Tobacco Company Limited was floated to purchase the assets of Saywell & Company. Although the new company initially used his name, the name of the company was changed to The Eagle Tobacco Company Limited, in August 1891; around that time Saywell sold his remaining shares in the business. He needed the funds for investment in his collieries.
R. L. Scrutton & Co. In 1883, Thomas Saywell, in partnership with an engineer, Robert Le Neve Scrutton (1843–1937), set up R. L. Scrutton and Company, at 35 Pitt Street, Sydney. The company were manufacturers and importers of ironwork for buildings and bridges, steam engines, wire rope, pipes, pumps, mining equipment, and machine tools. The company also fitted steamships with refrigeration equipment. They also were agents for large overseas engineering companies, including Brooklyn Engineering Company and Dorman Long & Co. Many years later trusses for the Harbour Bridge would be assembled at the company's yard at Alexandria.
Saywell would use R. L. Scrutton & Co. to import three steam locomotives from Hudswell Clarke; 'Saywell' made in 1886 and 'Pigmy' made in 1887, both for his tramway, and another locomotive, made in 1888, for the South Bulli Colliery. He also imported a locomotive, 'Fowler', made by John Fowler in 1885, initially for his tramway but later used at his mine. The South Bulli locomotive of 1888, which was in use until 1962, survives in non-operational condition.
Coal mining Saywell became a major investor in the coal industry in NSW. He was able to do this because he did so in partnership with people, who had greater knowledge and experience in the industry, notably William Wilson (c.1840—1896), who took charge of the mining and construction activities.
Vale of Clwydd Colliery The opening of the Main Western railway line over the Blue Mountains in 1867, created potential to exploit the Western Coalfields around Lithgow. Saywell opened an adit in 1868, around Hartley Vale, but abandoned this in 1869. In partnership John Newlands Wark, Saywell opened a new mine that became the Vale of Clwydd Colliery. A joint stock company called the Vale of Clwydd and Lithgow Valley Coal Mining and Copper Smelting Company was set up in November 1872, and an act of NSW Parliament, the Vale of Clwydd Company's Incorporation Act of 1881, later confirmed the incorporation of the company and the ownership of its property.
By 1880, Saywell had erected copper smelters adjacent to the mine. He leased these to Lewis Lloyd, a Welsh-born copper mining and smelting entrepreneur. Otherwise unsaleable fine coal, known as 'slack' coal, was well-suited as a fuel for reverberatory furnaces.
Bundanoon Saywell held a short-lived interest in the Ringwood Coal Mine, near Bundanoon, beginning in September 1883. The mine development would involve constructing 14 miles of tramway from the mine site to the Main Southern railway line. The mine closed and was abandoned, after a timber trestle structure collapsed. In 1885, Saywell moved equipment from the mine to his later mining venture, South Bulli Colliery.
South Bulli Colliery and Bellambi Bellambi became a coal port, when a coal jetty was built there in 1858, for the Woonoona Colliery, but this did not last.
In 1885, Saywell and his partner William Wilson leased land with an abandoned colliery, at Russell Vale, from the Osborne family, renaming it the South Bulli Colliery. They built the South Bulli jetty, at Bellambi, in 1887. The jetty stood on Bellambi Beach, immediately to the north of Bellambi Point and its opening reestablished Bellambi as a coal port. It was linked to the South Bulli Colliery by a private railway. William Wilson is credited with the construction of the South Bulli jetty at Bellambi.
In August 1890, Ebenezer Vickery purchased the South Bulli Colliery and its jetty. Although Saywell was only involved with South Bulli for around five years, the operation that he and his partner established was long-lived. The jetty closed in 1952, but the mine was working until quite recent years.
South Clifton In 1891, Saywell and his business partner William Wilson bought the South Clifton colliery from the North Illawarra Coal Company. In 1902, Saywell transferred his share of the ownership to a company Saywell's Collieries Limited, which also held interests in collieries around Lithgow. Like South Bulli, South Clifton was a long-lived mine.
Other coal interests Saywell was a director of the Wickham and Bullock Island Coal Company, around 1896.
Lady Robinson's Beach and Brighton-le-Sands
Saywell's land purchase In the early 1880s, Saywell, anticipating the effect of the Illawarra railway, bought a large tract of land—in those days mainly sandhills—which ran from the beach frontage at Lady Robinson's Beach on Botany Bay, west to what is now Francis Avenue and as far north what is now as Bestic Street.
Initially, Saywell referred to the locality as 'New Brighton'. To avoid confusion with another 'New Brighton' near Manly, the area was renamed Brighton-le-Sands, after Brighton-le-Sands, Merseyside, in England.
In early 1886, the NSW Government resumed the entire length of Lady Robinson's Beach and a narrow strip of the foreshore land, totalling around 105 acres, running from Cooks River to Sans Souci. It became known as Cook Park.
In 1887, the Saywell family moved from Petersham to 'Nevada', 8 The Grand Parade, on Lady Robinson's Beach, in what would later become known as the suburb of Brighton-le-Sands.
Tramway The first of Saywell's developments in the area was his privately owned tramway. It ran from Rockdale railway station to Lady Robinson's Beach at Brighton-le-Sands, along Bay Street, before originally turning left on the Grand Parade, where it terminated, allowing access to a new sea baths and hotel. It opened as a steam-hauled tramway in November 1885. It also allowed convenient access for new residents of the area and for visitors.
Sea Baths To draw patrons to the area, Saywell constructed sea baths, with a shark-proof enclosure. The design had consist of two adjoining baths, one for men and the other for women, each 200 feet long by 90 feet wide. There was wharf for steamers, refreshment rooms, waiting-rooms, ticket-office, laundries, and caretakers' offices would be housed in buildings forming an entrance to the baths. The baths were surrounded by a shark-proof fence, and would contain dressing-boxes and fresh-water showers. It was estimated that the baths would cost about £8000, to construct.
"Saywell's New Sea Baths" opened in October 1886. The baths were damaged during storms in mid 1901, and Saywell leased them for the last time in 1921, but over time the baths fell into disrepair. The "Old Baths" were still shown on a map in 1934, but already had been replaced by new baths further south on the beach belonging to the Municipality of Rockdale, in 1928.
New Brighton Hotel Saywell had the New Brighton Hotel erected in 1887, at the corner of The Grand Parade and Bay Street. It immediately became a popular seaside resort.
The three storey building had an entrance portico, wide verandahs and balconies, and sixty rooms. The main tower gave extensive views over Botany Bay. The hotel had an ice rink, running hot water, and electric lighting, and later a dance pavilion was built at the rear of the hotel. The hotel's architecture followed an eclectic mixture of Russian, Indian and Western influences, including towers and minarets.
It was Saywell, in collaboration with Samuel Cook, who had Norfolk Island pine trees planted, as a windbreak and to stabilize drifting sand opposite the New Brighton Hotel. Some of the trees still stand on The Grand Parade. Most of the original trees were destroyed by gales or road widening, but the tradition of planting new trees continued, and the species now lines much of the beachfront.
From January 1893 until 1895, when the adjoining racecourse opened, the hotel building became the first home of Scots College, before once again becoming a hotel.
'Shady Nook' On the southern side of Bay Street and west of The Grand Parade, opposite to his hotel, Saywell made a picnic grounds known as 'Shady Nook'. It had a merry-go-round, a robust shelter shed, and a building containing a tearoom, shop, and post office. Otherwise, in marked contrast to the nearby hotel, the facilities were basic and built for vandal resistance rather than comfort, including a heavy see-saw made from tramway sleepers, which had to be used carefully to avoid injury. Old tramcar bodies were provided as additional picnic shelters.
Although there was pressure to retain the land as open space, as late as 1928, the area was redeveloped and subsequently built over.