My October 2021 article for The Local is out, this month on William Thomas Dent.

Often my research for these articles leads me in unexpected directions, and this month was no exception taking me to the short lived Hartley Vale colliery of James and Alexander Brown in the Broadmeadow area, and all the way to the other side of the world to the coalfields of Durham where William’s father Mark Dent was a key figure in the great miners’ strikes of 1844 .

One of the things that struck me about the story of the Dent family is how much things can change in the space of one generation. Because of his involvement in the miners strikes, Mark Dent found it hard to get work, was subject to poverty and was “driven from his native land” to seek a living in Australia. William arrived in Australia after his father, lived and worked in a coal mining community, grew wealthy as the head of major financial institution, was an alderman for 17 years, many of them working co-operatively alongside Thomas Croudace the Lambton colliery manager.

The unexpected find from this month’s research is that Dent St North Lambton is probably named in honour of Mark Dent the famed mining unionist who died in Lambton in 1882, rather than William Thomas Dent who was only a relatively junior alderman at the time Dent St was named.