The Australian Women's Register

Zadow was the daughter of Johann Georg Hofmeyer and Elizabetha Hemming. After finishing her education at the Ladies Seminar, Biebrich-on-Rhine, Augustine became a governess and ladies companion. She travelled through Germany, France, Russia and finally England, where she settled in 1868.

In London she worked as a tailoress (or seamstress) and helped to reform the conditions for female clothing workers.
She married Heinrich Christian Wilhelm Zadow in 1871 and together with their three-year-old son, John, the couple travelled as assisted migrants to South Australia six years later, in 1877. There they both became active trade unionists.

Known as Augusta (having anglicised her name while in England), Zadow worked in a boot factory and helped to establish the Working Women’s Trade Union, becoming its foundation treasurer in 1890. She was a delegate to the United Trades and Labor Council as well as an active suffragist. In 1893 she established and managed the Distressed Women and Children’s Fund (later the Co-operative White Workers’ Association).

Augusta Zadow was appointed an Inspector of Factories in February 1895. The following year she contracted influenza and on July 7, 1896, died of haematemesis in Adelaide. She was buried in the West Terrace cemetery.