The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Social reformer, Rose Scott was born at Glendon, near Singleton, NSW, on 8 October, 1847. Rose Scott was one of the key figures in the turn-of-the century movement committed to the universal suffrage and a general improvement in the condition of women. She lived at home and did not marry, she devoted her life to the women’s movement.

In 1889 she helped form the Women’s Literary Society in Sydney and it was out of this society that the Womanhood Suffrage League developed in May 1891. She wrote and debated and lectured and argued until in 1902 the Women’s Suffrage Act became law in New South Wales. She lobbied for the establishment of Children’s Courts for juvenile offenders, for the ‘age of consent’ to be raised from fourteen to sixteen for girls (Crimes (Girls’ Protection) Acts 1910), and for a more comprehensive and equitable system of family maintenance to be established.

She opposed Federation and, in later years, conscription. She was president of a local branch of the London Peace Society, formed in 1907, and international secretary of the National Council of Women of New South Wales, formed in 1896.

One of the most important figures of her time she died in Sydney on 20 April 1925.