The Australian Women's Register

It is said that a letter Jessie Litchfield wrote in 1909, which somehow ended up in John Flynn’s hands, was instrumental to his involvement in the Australian Inland Mission. Had he not seen it, might well have become ‘Flynn of Korea’ rather than ‘Flynn of the Inland’ once he had completed his training to become a Presbyterian minister.

Litchfield’s letter pleaded for the Presbyterian Church to send a married, male Presbyterian missionary to the Northern Territory, so that he and his wife might start to ‘civilise’ it. Her greatest concern was the extent of informal and abusive interracial relationships that had been established between indigenous women and non-indigenous men, but she was also concerned about the impact of drink and drugs on public health. The place needed a missionary ‘to teach the people right from wrong’.

Flynn used the letter to encourage women he knew in Melbourne to support initiatives to help women in remote, inland regions. The initiatives were, of course, highly racialised.