The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Edith Kerr spent twenty years as a missionary for the Presbyterian church in Korea from 1921 until 1941, when the Japanese occupation of the country made her position dangerous. A trained primary school teacher, she held the position of principal of the Tongnai farm School, near Pusan from 1935. This school rehabilitated destitute women through vocational training. On her return home she continued her academic and theological education in addition to teaching at girls’ private schools in Melbourne. She gained the distinction of becoming the first woman in the Presbyterian Church of Australia to gain a bachelor of divinity in 1946. In 1944 she applied to be accepted as a formal candidate for the ministry of the Presbyterian church, but was refused admission.