The Australian Women's Register

A foundation staff member of the Canberra College of Advanced Education (now University of Canberra), Elsie Solly was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia. On 26 January 1983 she received the award for service to education, particularly in the field of secretarial studies. In 1977 she was awarded the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal. President of the Australian Women’s Army Service Association (Western Australia) Inc., Solly was on the original committee of the Association when established in 1947. Solly was also president of the Association of Academic Staff during her term with the Canberra College of Advanced Education. In 2003 Elsie Solly was awarded a Centenary of Federation medal for services to the veterans’ community.

Alice Corry was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia on 26 January 1987 for services to ex-servicemen and women. She joined the Australian Women’s Army Service on 27 August 1942, aged 16. Following completion of the recruiting course she transferred to Victoria and served at Land Headquarters as a signalwoman. At the time of her discharge on 12 March 1946 she had obtained the rank of Corporal. In 1947 she married Mervyn J Corry in Perth. At the Annual General Meeting in 1969, Corry was elected President of the Australian Women’s Army Service Association (WA), a post she held for 29 years. Honoured with being chosen to unveil the Western Australian memorial to Sybil Irving she was also the first Life Member of the Association in 1974. Corry was also involved with her church, her husband’s Corvettes’ Association, the Red Cross and the Braille Society.

Alma Hartshorn was a member of the Australian Student Christian Movement before she joined the Australian Women’s Army Service on 14 December 1942. She attended the first officer’s school and was later posted as Assistant Commandant Northern Command with the rank of Captain. Hartshorn was discharged on 1 March 1945.

Following the war, Hartshorn became a lecturer in Social Work at the University of Queensland. A member of the AWAS Association Qld, she became patron in 1995. For her academic and professional work, Alma Hartshorn was awarded an OAM (Member of the Order of Australia) on 26 January 1983, as well as a Fullbright Scholarship.

A member of the original Australian Women’s Army Service Officer’s School, Joan Bryce was appointed Assistant Commandant. She was discharged on 12 February 1946 with the rank of Lieutenant.

When established in 1981, Joan Bryce became the first patron of the AWAS Association of Queensland.

Dorathea Skov joined the Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS) after seeing an advertisement for girls interested in becoming army officers in 1941. Prior to enlisting Skov had been secretary of a variety of sporting bodies and suburban church groups as well as being interested in the YWCA. She became a member of the original Officer’s School and was later appointed Assistant Commandant Northern Command. Early in 1942 Captain Skov was one of the officers who interviewed candidates to enlist in the AWAS, visiting sixteen outback centres per week in the busiest period.

Dorathea Skov was the Queensland representative on the Sybil Irving Memorial Fund Committee.

Marj Oke’s first job was as a teacher in a one-room school. Upon her marriage in 1942, as was the policy of the time, she was suspended from teaching. Working at the Australian Jam Company, she encountered very poor working conditions. This experience propelled her to join the Food Preservers’ Union and become active in the Australian Labor Party. She stood as a candidate for the Australian Labor Party in the Legislative Assembly seat of St Kilda under her maiden name, Bennett, at the Victorian state election, which was held in 1943. In 1950, Oke became a founding and lifelong member of the Union of Australian Women. After returning to teaching in Moe, she campaigned for equal pay for women teachers, the abolition of the marriage bar and access to superannuation. Additionally, Oke formed a branch of the Aboriginal Advancement League and became, in 1992, a founding member of the Network for Older Women. On 10 June 1991 she was awarded an OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia) for service to aged people, particularly women. Oke was included in the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in March 2002.

Emily Dobson was a tour de force in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Tasmanian society. As the wife of the State Premier, Henry Dobson, she played a central role in multiple political and charitable organisations. She was vice-president of the Tasmanian section of the National Council of Women in 1899, and attended the first meeting of the International Council of Women in London that year. Dobson became president of the National Council of Women Tasmania in 1904 and held that position until her death. She was the first Australian to be elected vice- president of the International Council of Women at the Rome quinquennial in 1914.

Roberta Jull was the first woman to establish a medical practice in Perth in 1897. She became active in social welfare, public health and politics. In 1918 Jull became the first Medical Officer of Schools in the Western Australian Public Health Department and took a leading part in the infant health movement.

The daughter of Dr Roberta and Martin Jull, Henrietta Drake-Brockman married the then Commissioner for the far north west of Australia, Geoffrey Drake-Brockman on 3 August 1921. While in the north west she wrote articles for the West Australia under the pseudonym ‘Henry Drake’. The author of Men Without Wives, which won the Australian Sesquicentenary prize, Drake-Brockman also wrote for the theatre, and was co-editor, with Walter Murdoch, of Australian Short Stories. On 1 January 1967 Henrietta Drake-Brockman was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to Australian literature.

After being exposed to ‘sweated labour’ conditions while working in the Melbourne clothing industry during the 1880s, Jean Beadle was inspired to dedicate her life to the betterment of conditions for women and children. Known as the ‘The Grand Old Lady of the Labor Party,’ she was a founding member of the Women’s Political and Social Crusade and the Labor Women’s Organization in Victoria (1898), Fremantle (1905) and Goldfields (1906). She was also a delegate to the Eastern Goldfields District Council of the State Australian Labor Party. Beadle was one of the first women appointed as a Justice of the Peace in Western Australia, sitting for many years on the Married Women’s Court. She was later appointed to serve as an honorary Justice on the bench of the Children’s Courts. An official visitor to the women’s section of the Fremantle Prison, Beadle also was instrumental in the building of the King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women. She was secretary, of the King Edward Memorial Hospital Advisory Board, from 1921 until her death. In recognition of her dedicated service the hospital annually awards a Jean Beadle scholarship.

The second woman member of the House of Representatives, Doris Blackburn successfully won her late husband’s Federal seat of Bourke as an Independent Labor candidate in 1946. In an electoral redistribution the seat of Bourke was abolished and Blackburn contested the new seat of Wills at the 1949 and 1951 elections, but was unsuccessful on both occasions.

She was involved in the Free Kindergarten movement and numerous campaigns for better education, playgrounds and crèches. Blackburn was a member of the Women’s Political Association in Victoria, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Women’s Prison Council and the Save the Children Fund. In 1957, with Doug Nicholls, she was a co-founder of the Aboriginal Advancement League and the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement.

In 1935 Jessie Bage became the first woman appointed to the Royal Melbourne Hospital Management committee. Educated at Melbourne Church of England Girls Grammar School Bage was a member of the school council. Jessie Bage House, which accommodates Year 12 students boarding at the school, is named in her honour. For her service with a number of social welfare associations Jessie Bage was appointed an Officer to the Order of the British Empire on 2 January 1956.

Born Mary Wilson at Richmond, Victoria, she was also known by her stepfather’s name, Fawaz, before adopting the name of her country as a stage name prior to her debut in 1922 at Covent Garden. Known as one of the world’s greatest Wagnerian sopranos Florence Austral married the Australian virtuoso flautist John Amadio in 1925 and toured widely with him in America and Australia. After the Second World War she returned to Australia almost completely paralysed with multiple sclerosis. She nevertheless taught until her retirement in 1959. Austral died at a nursing home in Newcastle on 16 May 1968.

Born into a musical family, soprano Amy Castles made her Melbourne, Victoria, debut at the annual meeting of the Austral Salon in 1899. She studied in Paris with Madame Marchesi and then Jacques Bouhy before appearing with Ada Crossley and Clara Butt at St James’s Hall, London in 1901. After completing further study Castles sang at the Queen’s Hall concerts in London and gave a command performance before King Edward VII in 1906. Castles then appeared in Hamlet at Cologne, Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet and Faust. She also took part in the Harrison tours of Great Britain and sang with conductors Hans Richter, (Sir) Henry Wood and Landon Ronald. Following her tour of Australia for J & N Tait, in 1909, Castles performed in the Australian premiere of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly for J C Williamson before returning to Europe. At the outbreak of war Castles returned to Australia where she completed a tour of the capital cities. She made her American debut at Carnegie Hall, New York in 1917 as well as giving concerts for sick and wounded soldiers and opening her Manhattan home to visiting Australians. With the Williamson Grand Opera Company Castles toured Australia in 1919 and again in 1925 on a concert tour managed by her brother George and including her sister Eileen.

Contralto singer Madame Ada Crossley studied piano under Mrs Hastings of Port Albert and later Signor Zelman. She then sang with Madame Fanny Simonsen of Melbourne. Prior to leaving Australia in March 1894, to study in Europe, she gave farewell concerts in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide. With Percy Grainger a member of her entourage, she toured Australia and New Zealand, returning to England via South Africa (1903-1904). Crossley returned to Australia for a series of concerts in 1908-1909. Once again Grainger was a supporting artist. During the First World War she sang at benefit concerts. After the war she reduced her professional engagements. Ada Crossley died on 17 October 1929 at Woodlands Park, Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire.

Eleanor Glencross was the second woman to stand for the Victorian Parliament. She unsuccessfully contested the seat of Brighton in 1928 as an Independent Nationalist. She had previously stood for the Federal seat of Henty in 1922 and in 1943 the seat of Martin. A former general secretary, chief speaker and organizer of the Australian Women’s National League in 1920 Glencross became president of the Housewives’ Association of Victoria. In 1923 she became president of the Federated Housewives Association of Australia. During World War II she was prominent in patriotic activities as a member of the State advisory committee of the Commonwealth prices commissioner, the council of the Lord Mayor’s Patriotic and War Fund and of the executive of the Women’s Voluntary National Register.

Mrs Aeneas Gunn was the author of The Black Princess, published in 1905, and We of the Never Never, published in 1908. During and after World War I she worked tirelessly to support the servicemen of Monbulk, Victoria who she referred to as “my boys.” She was awarded an OBE in 1939, “in recognition of her services to Australian Literature and to the disabled soldiers and their dependents.” In 1948 she began to work on a book recording all the details of the volunteers from Monbulk who had served in the Boer War, the Boxer Rebellion and World War I. Gunn presented her completed manuscript to the Monbulk RSL in 1953 and the book, My Boys – A Book of Remembrance, was published for the first time in 2000.

Dr Penny Flett, who settled in Australia in 1965, was awarded the Centenary Medal in 2003 for service to the aged and disabled community through the Brightwater Care Group. Prior to becoming the Chief Executive Officer of the Brightwater Care Group on 23 July 1986 Flett worked in a variety of positions including four years with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). In 1974 she became the first woman in peacetime to hold a male rank and the first woman doctor to serve in the RAAF. Penny Flett was named Telstra Australian Business Woman of the Year in 1998.

After 21½ years Marie Fisher retired from the Women’s Royal Australian Army Corps, Australian Regular Army (WRAAC ARA) on 23 July 1974 and was placed on the retired list. During her service she qualified and was promoted from Private to Captain having served in New South Wales, Tasmania and Victoria. Following her discharge from the WRAAC Fisher returned to study at both the Technical and Further Education (TAFE) college and the University of New South Wales (UNSW), where she was later employed before retiring in 1991 aged 65 years.

Mary Tenison Woods (née Kitson) was the first woman to graduate in law in South Australia. She was admitted to the bar on 20 October 1917. Her application to become a public notary in 1921 led to a change in the law: the existing Act did not include women as ‘persons’.

When Mary married in 1924 her partners did not wish to work with a married woman. Mary left the firm and formed a new partnership in 1925, in what may have been the first female practice in Australia. In the mid 1930s, Mary moved to Sydney and worked as a legal editor.

Following the failure of her marriage to Julian Tenison Woods, she moved to Sydney with her son, where she worked as a legal editor. In 1941 she became a member of the Child Welfare Advisory Council (NSW), held many honorary positions and served on a number of boards. Mary lectured at the university on legal aspects of social work and wrote several legal textbooks on a range of subjects.

In 1950 Tenison Woods was appointed chief of the office of the status of women in the division of human rights, United Nations Secretariat, New York. During her term two major conventions were adopted: the Convention of the Political Rights of Women (1952), the first international law aimed at the granting and protection of women’s full political rights, and the Convention of the Nationality of Married Women (1957) which decreed that marriage should not affect the nationality of a wife.

On 13 June 1959 Mary Tenison Woods was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for public service, especially with the United Nations. Previously she had been appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire on 8 June 1950 for services to child welfare.

Betty Jeffrey was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia on 8 June 1987 for service to the welfare of nurses in Victoria and ex-service men and women. Jeffrey was one of the members of the Australian Army Nursing Service who was captured by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in 1942. Incarcerated in Japanese prisoner of war camps for three and a half years, after the war she wrote about the experiences in White Coolies (1954) which was later the basis for the film script Paradise Road (1999). After her return to Melbourne, and spending some time in hospital, Jeffrey and fellow survivor Vivian Bullwinkel travelled throughout Victoria raising funds towards a memorial for military nurses. The Nurses Memorial Centre was opened on 19 February 1950 and Jeffrey was appointed its first administrator. In 1986 she became the Centre’s patron.

Margaret Lang was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire on 8 June 1950 for service with the Royal Australian Air Force Nursing Service. Lang was the founder and Matron-in-Chief of the Service during World War II. She had completed her training at Wangaratta District Hospital and the Women’s Hospital (later Royal), Melbourne. During World War I Lang served in Salonika with the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS). Other positions she held included being a Matron of a number of Victorian country hospitals, the Police Hospital and the Talbot Epileptics Colony in Clayton, Victoria.

Edith Baker undertook her nursing training at Memorial Hospital, Adelaide and then worked in South Africa and England before being appointed to the Royal Australian Air Force Nursing Service (RAAFNS) in 1941. Baker rose to the position of area matron before being discharged on 8 May 1944.

The funeral service for former Group Officer Betty Docker, aged 81, was held at the Royal Military College, Duntroon. Director of the Royal Australian Air Force Nursing Service (RAAFNS) Docker trained at the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne. She then joined the hospital staff before enlisting with the RAAFNS in 1944. During her time in the service she fought for change so married women could continue on as nurses and women could reach the highest ranks – something not allowed previously. After 28 years with the RAAFNS Docker retired in 1975 having been awarded The Royal Red Cross (2nd Class), 1968; Royal Red Cross, 1970; the Florence Nightingale Medal, 1971 and the National Medal in 1977.

Selina (also spelt Sulina) Sutherland was the first person in the State of Victoria to be licensed under the 1887 Neglected Children’s Act. The Act sanctioned private licensed individuals to remove children from unfit homes and take them under their own guardianship. The daughter of Baigrie and Janet (née MacDonald) Sutherland, Selina Sutherland was born in Scotland, spent some time in New Zealand before settling in Melbourne, Australia, in 1881. Initially she worked as a nurse and, along with Mrs Maria Armour, founded the Scots’ Church Neglected Children’s Aid Society in 1881. For the next 28 years Sutherland was involved with helping Melbourne’s poor. Following her death on 8 October 1909 a public appeal was held to erected a granite memorial for her grave.

Ethel Osborne and her husband William, who had been appointed professor of physiology and histology at the University of Melbourne, migrated to Australia in 1904. Osborne, a foundation member of The Catalysts, visited the Lyceum Club while travelling through London. At the inaugural meeting of the Lyceum Club in Melbourne she was elected vice-president. Back in England during World War I Osborne worked with the British Ministry of Munitions of War. Here she conducted investigations for the Health of Munition Workers’ Committee and the Industrial Fatigue Research Board. Upon her return to Melbourne she was invited to report to the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration on the conditions of employment of women workers in the clothing industry, for a case which won some workers a 44 hour week. Osborne then studied medicine at the University of Melbourne, practising at the Queen Victoria Hospital for Women and Children, the (Royal) Melbourne Hospital and privately. Osborne became a foundation member of the Emily McPherson College of Domestic Economy council, serving as treasurer, vice-president and president. When the college’s new premises were opened in 1927, its hall was named after her. Before retiring, in 1938, Osborne represented Australia at the Pan-Pacific Women’s Conference (Honolulu 1928 and 1930), attended the Congress on Industrial Accidents and Diseases (Geneva) the International Congress of Industrial Relations (Amsterdam), the Disarmament Conference (Paris) and investigated employment problems in Yorkshire.