The Australian Women's Register

Independent candidate for North Shore in 1920.

Mary Booth was born in Sydney and educated privately, at Airlie School and then University of Sydney. From 1891-1893 she was governess to the children of the Earl of Jersey, then governor of NSW. In 1894 she began studying medicine at the University of Melbourne, but transferred to Edinburgh, from which she graduated in 1899. She returned to Sydney in 1900 but did not practise medicine for long. She taught hygiene at girls’ secondary schools, and was lecturer in hygiene for the NSW Department of Public Instruction 1904-09. In 1910-12 she helped establish the Victorian school medical service.
She was very active during World War I, founding the Babies’ Kit Society and the Soldiers Club. She was on the executive committee of the Universal Service League and campaigned in favour of conscription.
Running as an independent feminist, she stood in the first election for which women were entitled to be candidates. Two years later, in 1922, she failed to gain nomination for the Senate election though she was supported by the Women’s Reform League.
In 1921 she founded the Anzac Fellowship of Women, and remained its president until 1956. From 1921, she was involved in the Dreadnought Scheme which brought out boy immigrants, and from 1925 to 1944 published a monthly magazine, Boy Settler.
She was an inveterate joiner and activist and belonged to numerous organizations including the League of Nations Union, the Town Planning Association, and the English Speaking Union.
Her last major initiative was to found the Memorial College of Household Arts and Sciences in 1936, to which young women went to learn the domestic arts, as Dr Booth believed :”good wives made good husbands”. After her death and the sale of the property, the funds were used to found the Dr Mary Booth scholarship for women economics students at the University of Sydney.