The Australian Women's Register

Bessie Rischbieth’s interest in woman’s suffrage was aroused when she attended a suffrage meeting in London in 1908. A co-founder of the Women’s Service Guild of Western Australia in 1909, she was also co-founder and President of the Australian Federation of Women Voters (1921-1942). Rischbieth edited The Dawn, a women’s paper issued in Perth from 1914 to 1939. A talented craftswoman her art embroidery, beaten copperwork and word carvings were exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts. In the later years of her life Rischbieth clashed with Jessie Street, whom she labelled a communist. Bessie Rischbieth was appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her work with women’s movements.

Delia Russell, née Law, was active across a range of charitable organisations throughout her life. Educated at the Oberwyl School in Melbourne, she married Percy Joseph Russell, solicitor and municipal councillor in October 1893. Delia Russell’s major interests were the Red Cross Society; she remained a member of the Victorian Council until her death in 1938. She founded and ran the St Kilda Red Cross kitchen during World War I, and worked on special diets for influenza patients. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her work in 1920. Her subsequent commitments included Victorian president of the Housewives’ Association (1929-1930 – although she was expelled from this group in 1930 due to her anti-prohibition stance), vice-president of the Victorian Institute of Almoners, councillor of the Talbot Epileptic Colony, Clayton, an executive member of the National Council of Women, president of the Australian Temperance Association (which fought against prohibition), a justice of the peace and special magistrate of the Children’s Court, Melbourne. She was president of the Women’s Hospital committee from 1932-1934.

Jeannie Gilruth, née McLay, married John Anderson Gilruth on 20 March 1899 at Dunedin, New Zealand and accompanied her husband to Australia when he took up the appointment as professor of veterinary pathology at the University of Melbourne in 1908. He later became the administrator of the Northern Territory in 1912. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1918 for her contribution to the Red Cross Society.

The Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS) was established on 13 August 1941, to release men from certain military duties for service with fighting units. The Service recruited women between the ages of 18 and 45 and they served in a variety of roles including clerks, typists, cooks and drivers. In 1945 a contingent was sent to Lae and a small group went to Holland. In June 1947, owing to the end of World War II, the AWAS was disbanded.

Constance Fall’s distinguished war service in the Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps was acknowledged with a Mention in Dispatches on 1 April 1941 and the award of the Royal Red Cross medal on 16 April 1942, when she was serving with the 1st Australian General Hospital in the Middle East. Born in England of Australian parents, and educated there, Constance Fall completed her nursing training in Launceston, Tasmania. After her war service she assumed the position of matron-in-charge of the King George V Hospital in Sydney, New South Wales from 1948-1960 and from 1961 became matron of the New South Wales Masonic Homes in Glenfield. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1976 for services to the Red Cross Society.

Gwen Meredith was the writer of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio serial Blue Hills. On 10 June 1967 she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to radio entertainment and on the 11 June 1977 an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her services to the Arts.

Opera singer Marjorie Lawrence contracted poliomyelitis in 1941 and was almost crippled in both legs, but continued to perform using a wheel chair placed on stage. During World War II she entertained the troops and was awarded the cross of the Legion d’ Honneur (1946) by the French government. On 31 December 1976 Marjorie Lawrence was appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for her services to the performing arts.

Jean Sinclair Isbister (known as Clair) was a consultant paediatrician at the Royal North Shore Hospital, New South Wales, from 1949 and published many books on motherhood under the name Clair Isbister. She was appointed to The Order of the British Empire – Officer (Civil) on 1 January 1969 for services to medicine.

Born in Laverton, Western Australia, May O’Brien survived her removal to Mount Margaret Aboriginal Mission as a child, eventually taking up her first appointment as a teacher at Mount Margaret. After teaching for 25 years she moved into education policy, working for the Western Australia Ministry of Education and the Aboriginal Education Branch.

O’Brien was awarded the British Empire Medal on 31 December 1977 for work in Aboriginal education. For this she was also awarded the John Curtin medal. O’Brien was a delegate for Australia at the United Nations conference on Women in Denmark, 1980. She has written several children’s books.

Horton (ed) (1994), Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia; WCTU (1980), Some Aboriginal Women Pathfinders.

A Kaurna woman, Gladys Elphick was born in Adelaide and brought up on the Point Pearce Reserve. Elphick’s life long work against discrimination and exploitation of Aboriginal people included her formation of the Aboriginal Women’s Council and, with others, a legal aid service, medical service and the Aboriginal Community Centre in Adelaide. Also well known as ‘Aunty Glad’, Elphick was appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire on 1 January 1971 for services to the Aboriginal community. In 1984, during National Aborigines Week, Elphick was named South Australian Aboriginal of the Year.

Horton (ed) (1994), Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia; Healey (2001), S.A.’s Greats.

Frances Mary Burke was appointed as a Member of the British Empire on the 1 January 1970 for her contribution to art and design. In 1937 she established with fellow graduate Morris Holloway Australia’s first registered textile printery – Burway Prints. The Frances Burke Textile Resource Centre at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology was named in her honour. The centre now forms part of the RMIT Design Archives.

Vera White (née Deakin) the daughter of Australian Prime Minister Alfred Deakin and his philanthropic wife Pattie was appointed an Officer of the British Empire for her work with the Red Cross during the First World War. She received her award on 15 March 1918.

A novelist, biographer and political candidate, Jeanne Forster Young passionately advocated proportional representation for women in parliament. She became president of the Democratic Women’s Association of South Australia.

Ros Bowden, interviewer and broadcaster with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, worked in the Radio National Social History Unit and on the ‘Coming Out Show’.

Between 1977 and 1989 she conducted interviews for various radio programmes broadcast on the ABC.

Nancy Bird Walton was Australia’s youngest female pilot. She was awarded imperial honours for her work with the Far West Children’s Health Scheme.

Distinguished librarian, trade unionist and feminist, Jean Fleming Arnot, worked at the State Library of New South Wales from 1921 until her retirement in 1968. During her life Arnot was a member and leader of numerous women’s organisations. Arnot was appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (Civil) on 12 June 1965 for her community services in Sydney. She died in Sydney on 27 September 1995, at the age of 92.

Ida Emily Leeson (1885-1964) was born at Leichhardt, Sydney, the daughter of Thomas Leeson, a carpenter from Canada, and his Australian born wife Mary Ann, née Emberson.

Leeson was educated at Leichhardt Public School and Sydney Girl’s High School. She graduated with a Batchelor of Arts from the University of Sydney in 1906. In August that year she was appointed library assistant at the Public Library of New South Wales, and in 1909 was transferred to the Mitchell Library. In 1932 she was appointed second Mitchell Librarian.

In April 1944 Lieutenant Colonel A.A. Conlan secured Ida Leeson’s secondment as a research officer in the Directorate of Research, where she was ranked captain, and later major in the Australian Military Forces. She was a member of A.A. Conlan’s ‘think-tank’ which included John Kerr. Leeson did not return to the Mitchell Library, officially resigning in 1946. Toward the end of the war she was appointed librarian-archivist for the School of Civil Affairs, later known as the Australian School of Pacific Administration. In 1949 she went to Noumea to establish the library for the South Pacific Commission, returning to Australia the following year, where she continued to work for the commission in Sydney until 1956.

Margaret Sturge Watts was involved with numerous organisations working for women, peace, children’s welfare and displaced persons. She was founding President of the City Girls’ Amateur Sports Association.

Shirley Anderson attended Marrickville Girls High School and the Metropolitan Secretarial College in Sydney before travelling and working overseas. She obtained an unrestricted Private Pilot’s Licence in 1950.

From 1960 until her retirement in 1985 she worked as an air traffic controller and instructor at Sydney’s Kingsford-Smith Airport. She was the first woman in Sydney to be appointed to this position.

The inaugural Jean Arnot Luncheon was held at Parliament House, Sydney, on 8 April 1994, and originated from Jean Fleming Arnot’s 90th birthday celebrations a year earlier at the same venue.

Edith Cowan, the first woman to be elected to an Australian parliament in Western Australia in 1921, was described in her entry in Australian feminism, a companion, as ‘a committed, tireless and public campaigner for women’s and children’s rights from the early twentieth century’. Married at the age of seventeen to James Cowan, registrar and master of the Supreme Court, they had five children. She was the founding secretary in 1894 and later president of the Karrakatta Club, a women’s club in Perth, which campaigned for female suffrage. Her commitment to women’s well-being resulted in her active involvement in the establishment of the Western Australian National Council of Women in 1911. She was a foundation member of the Children’s Protection Society in 1906 and the first woman to be appointed to the Children’s Court bench in 1915. She became a Justice of the Peace in 1920. In the same year her work was acknowledged with her appointment to the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to the Western Australian division of the Red Cross Society, of which she was a founding member in 1914.

A clock tower at the entrance to King’s Park in Perth was erected to her memory in 1934 and in 1995 her portrait was printed on the Australian fifty dollar note.

Georgina McCready was appointed as one of the first supervisory sisters in the New South Wales Department of Health in 1929, under the Public Health Act (1929). A founding member of the New South Wales Nurses Association (NSWNA) in 1931, she was its first honorary secretary and the first woman to hold such a position in an industrial organisation in Australia. McCready was one of four founders of the New South Wales College of Nursing (NSWCN) in 1949. The McCready Scholarship (tenable at NSWCN) was established in 1954 by NSWNA in her honour. She was appointed MBE – Member of The Order of the British Empire (Civil) – 8 June 1963, for services to the nursing profession.

Nancy Millis was Professor of Microbiology at the University of Melbourne 1982-1991. She received a Bachelor of Agricultural Science in 1945, a Master of Agricultural Science in 1948 and a Doctorate in Science (Hon) in 1993, all from the University of Melbourne. She was awarded a Boots Research Scholarship in the UK and used it to study at the University of Bristol where she received a PhD in 1952.

She returned to work as a demonstrator in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Melbourne in 1952 and was originally appointed as a lecturer in that department in 1956 following the award of a Fulbright travel grant in 1954.

Nancy Millis was one of the pioneers of the study of fermentation technology in Australia. When she returned from Bristol in 1951 she had hoped to put her expertise to good effect; she had hoped to work for Carlton United Brewery, but at that time they did not employ women in their laboratories.

Millis was appointed MBE – Member of The Order of the British Empire (Civil) – 31 December 1976 for her work in biological sciences and education. She was also appointed AC – Companion of the Order of Australia – 11 June 1990.

During Annie Sage’s distinguished military nursing career in World War II she introduced the Australian Army Medical Women’s Service Training Scheme and was closely involved in the planning and establishment of the Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps as an integral part of the Australian Regular Army and the Citizen Military Forces.

After the war she took an active and leading role in the establishment of the War Nurses Memorial Centre and the Centaur War Nurses Fund. Through her work with the (Royal) College of Nursing she made a very important contribution to postgraduate nursing education. She was also active in the negotiations that brought about the 1958 Nurses’ Act which gave wider power to the registering authority, the Victorian Nursing Council. She was awarded the Royal Red Cross for her war work with the Australian Army Nursing Service in the Middle East in 1942 (for ‘exceptional tact and administrative ability’) and she was awarded the CBE (Military Division) in 1951.

Georgina Sweet was Australia’s first female Acting Professor (Biology, University of Melbourne, 1916-1917). She was Associate Professor of Zoology at the University of Melbourne from 1920 to 1924. Sweet’s research included the zoology of Australian native animals and the parasites infesting Australian stock and native fauna. She was appointed OBE – Officer of The Order of the British Empire (Civil) – 3 June 1935, for services to women’s movements.

Winifred Waddell worked with Native Plant Preservation Groups during the 1950s. She was responsible for securing the first Wildflower Sanctuary, at Tallarook, in 1949. She was appointed MBE – The Order of the British Empire – Member (Civil) – 1 January 1964, for preservation of natural flora.

Lady Joyce Ethel Price’s outstanding contribution to the Girl Guides both in Australia and worldwide was first recognised at a commonwealth level in 1968 when she was appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). In 1977 she also received the Girl Guide Fish Award; and in 1978 her efforts were further recognised when she was appointed to the Order of St Michael and St George – Commanders (CMG).