Thomas Shadrach JAMES

JAMES, THOMAS SHADRACH (b. Mauritius, 1856; d. Cumeroogunga, NSW, 1945). Community leader.

Thomas James was a Mauritian Indian. He studied medicine but withdrew due to ill health, after which he migrated to Australia as a young man. In 1881, James attended a Revival Camp at Melbourne's Brighton Beach. Also in attendance were Daniel and Janet Matthews (q.v.) and forty-one Aboriginal people from the Maloga Mission. James offered to work at the mission and returned to Maloga with the Matthews. 'Thomas James was gifted and ... he was to play an important part for the next 40 years as the doctor, teacher, dentist, preacher and friend, not only to the Aboriginal community but to the white community across the river'. (Jackomos, 1979)

In 1883, the NSW Education Department officially appointed James as the salaried teacher of the Maloga school. 'The school flourished under Mr. James' careful direction' wrote Daniel Matthews (Thirteenth Report of the Maloga Mission). In 1885, he married one of his pupils, Ada Cooper, with whom he had eight children, five girls and three boys. With this marriage, Thomas James became accepted ever after by the Aboriginal people as one of themselves.

In 1888, when the Aborigines Protection Board forced the closure of Maloga Mission and replaced it with the government settlement, Cumeroogunga, James went with the people as the teacher of Cumeroogunga school. He was described in the 1892-3 Aborigines Protection Board Report as 'popular and esteemed'. Among his pupils were Pastor Sir Douglas Nichols; Lynch Cooper, winner of the Stawell Gift footrace, and other great Aboriginal leaders such as Bill and Eric Onus, and his own son Shadrach, who were to become foundation members of the Australian Aborigines League in the 1930s.

At Cumeroogunga, with Daniel and Janet Matthews obstructed by officialdom, Thomas James became the spiritual adviser of the Aboriginal people. He led the Cumeroogunga Church, long independent and unaligned with other denominations until eventually becoming linked with the Churches of Christ. In retirement, as the beloved 'Grandfather James', he continued to be the trusted guide and leader of the Cumeroogunga people until his death at the age of 89. He lies buried with the other old people of Maloga and Cumeroogunga, where a simple cairn bears the words, 'They being dead yet speak'.

Nancy Cato, Mister Maloga (St Lucia, 1976); Alick Jackomos, 'Thomas Shadrach James, (1856-1945)', Identity, Jan 1979, 10-11; Daniel Matthews, Annual Reports of the Maloga Mission (Echuca) 1875-1900

JOHN HARRIS