The Australian Women's Register

Serena Thorne was born in Devon in October 1842, daughter of Samuel and Mary Thorne. Her grandfather, William O’Bryan was founder and co-organizer of the Bible Christian Church which welcomed women preachers. By the age of twenty one Serena Thorne had already become well known throughout Devon, Cornwall and South Wales as a preacher. In 1865 the church sent her to Queensland to help establish Bible Christianity and in 1870 she moved first to Victoria and South Australia soon after. She received a warm welcome in South Australia and preached at churches in Adelaide and country areas. In March 1871 she married Octavius Lake whom she had known in Devon and they worked together to further Bible Christianity in South Australia. They had seven children of whom only one survived. Serena Lake attended the foundation meeting of the South Australian Women’s Suffrage League and was appointed to the Council. She was almost certainly a member of the Social Purity Society as she was familiar with the background of the League’s foundation. In 1889 the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) appointed her to the dual positions of Colonial organizer and Suffrage superintendent. In 1891 she was made a life vice-president of the WCTU. At the 1892 annual South Australian Women’s Suffrage League meeting she spoke eloquently in support of Mary Lee’s report, seconded by Catherine Helen Spence. After this, however, she did not appear again in either the League or WCTU records and when suffrage was won the Lakes were at Moonta in country South Australia carrying on their missionary and pastoral work. She died in 1902 aged 60.