The Australian Women's Register

On 3 June 1919, Matron Adelaide Maud Kellett was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (Military) for nursing service in World War I. Kellett had been twice mentioned in despatches during the war. She was awarded the Red Cross Medal (23 February 1917), and the Florence Nightingale Medal.

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.

Helen Nicholls, née Sprent, became a prominent worker for charitable causes in Tasmania after her marriage to Herbert (later Sir Herbert) Nicholls on 3 January 1905. As the wife of a politician, judge and later Lieutenant-Governor of Tasmania and mother of five children, she devoted much of her time to charitable causes, one of which was the Red Cross Society. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1918 for her services to the Red Cross Society.

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.

Helen Ashton was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire on 4 October 1918 for her work for the Red Cross Society. Her husband, James, worked closely with the first president, Lady Helen Munro Ferguson.

Adelaide Creswell was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire on 15 March 1918 for services to the Red Cross Society. From 1914 to 1915 she was a member of the provisional committee of the Victorian Division of the Australian branch of the British Red Cross Society.

Zara Aronson, née Baar, distinguished herself through her journalism, feminism and charitable work in Sydney and Perth, after having spent her early life in Europe. She returned to Sydney in 1879 to complete her education. After her marriage to Frederick Aronson, a merchant, in October 1882, she launched into her charitable work and served on the committees of the Sydney Industrial Blind Institution and the Thirlmere and the Queen Victoria homes for consumptives. As an active feminist from the 1890s, she was an original member of the Women’s Literary Society and a founding member of the National Council of Women in 1896. She contributed to a range of journals and newspapers throughout her life, which included Australian Town and Country Journal, The Sydney Mail, and The Sydney Morning Herald, and wrote a cookery book, the proceeds of which she donated to the Junior Red Cross in New South Wales. She was an original member of the executive committee of the New South Wales Division of the British Red Cross Society in 1914 and organised and ran the depot which distributed more than a million books and magazines during World War I. She maintained her feminist interests when she became foundation secretary of the Women Writers of New South Wales in 1925, assuming the presidency in 1930. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire on 23 June 1936 for her services to the Red Cross Society.

Mary Chomley, daughter of Judge Chomley of ‘Dromkeen’ at Riddell’s Creek, worked for the Red Cross Society and contributed to the struggle for the equality of women both in Victoria and in England. She was secretary of the Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work in 1907. She assumed the position of foundation state secretary of the Victoria League from 1909-1914, and maintained her membership until her death in July 1960. In London during, she worked at the Princess Christian’s Hospital for Officers from 1915-1916 and was secretary of the Prisoners of War branch of the Australian Red Cross, London, from 1916-1919. She was appointed as Officer of the Order of the British Empire (Civil) on 15 March 1918 for her contribution to the Red Cross Society. Whilst in London after World War I, she was a member of the delegation appointed by the British Government to report on working conditions for women and the opportunities for female migrants to Australia in 1919-1920, and Australian representative on the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women. From 1925 until 1933 she was president of the women’s section of the British Legion, Virginia Water, Surrey, England. Violet Teague, one of Australia’s internationally recognised artists at the turn of the nineteenth century, painted Mary Chomley’s portrait in 1909.

Eleanor MacKinnon, a foundation honorary secretary to the New South Wales Division of the Australian branch of the British Red Cross Society in August 1914, remained a member of the state executive and finance committees and a delegate to the central council until her death in 1936. After her marriage to physician Roger MacKinnon in 1896, and the birth of their two sons at Warialda, they moved to North Sydney in 1903. Eleanor MacKinnon was involved in a range of activities, which included learning to paint and membership of a number of benevolent and political societies. Her major contribution was to the Red Cross Society and she founded the world’s first Junior Red Cross division, with its motto, ‘the child for the child’ and remained its honorary director until 1935. In addition she created the Red Cross Record in 1914, editing it for twenty-one years, the Junior Red Cross Record in 1918 and compiled the Red Cross Knitting and Cookery books. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (Civil), in 1918, for her contribution to the Red Cross Society. Subsequently she visited the headquarters of the League of Red Cross Societies in Paris in 1925, and from 1925-1926 worked to reconstruct the Red Cross in Australia for a peace time role. She was awarded the King George V Silver Jubilee Medal in 1935 in recognition of her contribution to hospitals and health care in Australia.

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.

Betty Cuthbert was the first Australian athlete to win an Olympic gold medal on Australian soil. Nicknamed the ‘Golden Girl’ of Australian athletics, she was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1985 as an Athlete Member for her contribution to the sport of athletic. She was elevated to “Legend of Australian Sport” in 1994.

Betty Cuthbert was so unsure that she would make the Australian Olympic Games team in 1956, she bought tickets to attend the Games as a spectator.

On 9 June 1938, Isabella Younger Ross was awarded the Order of the British Empire for her services as secretary to the Baby Health Centre Association of Victoria.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Fanny Eleanor Williams (known as Eleanor) was one of the first three staff members of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in 1920. She co-authored or authored more than fifty publications in her career and specialised in research on dysentery, influenza, hydatids and snake venom. She played a key role in the development of the first Australian blood bank. Not only a researcher, she was also responsible for the training of staff (including Sir Macfarlane Burnet) and, later in life, general organisation of WEHI. According to Sir Macfarlane Burnet and Dr Ian Wood, ‘she was the channel through which serological techniques developed in Melbourne’. Miss Williams was awarded the Associate Royal Red Cross on 1 January 1917 for her bacteriological work in the Australian Imperial Force. She was appointed MBE – The Order of the British Empire – Member (Civil) – 13 June 1957, for her work at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.