The Australian Women's Register

Luise Homann was born on 21 August 1837 in Hanover Germany. She married Wilhelm Wendtlandt, a Lutheran missionary on 13 July 1855 and had 4 children. They travelled widely, first to Madras then to South Africa, South America, England and then back to Germany. Wendtlandt died in 1861. After his death, Luise became a missionary in Germany. She remarried Ernst Homann 3 October 1867 and followed her husband to South Australia, where they worked at Hermannsburg Mission station.

Gaye Barnes, née Robinson, grew up in Angle Park, Adelaide where her parents ran racing stables. Within an eighteen month period, between the ages of 19 and 20, she had three abortions for personal convenience. This had a profound effect on her resulting in ‘a life-altering religious experience’ arising out of continuing depression. She later became determined to help others. In 1990 she and her husband Peter, also a Christian, sold their home to establish the non-denominational Genesis Pregnancy Support service at Marden.

Berthe Mathilde Fritsch (née Simpfendor) was born in 1896 in the Baranduda – Leneva District in Victoria, Australia. Her father was a Lutheran Pastor. She took over the housekeeping duties after her mother died in 1920. She married Walter Fritsch in 1922, moved to New South Wales then back to Victoria, before settling in Adelaide in 1938 at St Stephen’s. There she joined the Lutheran Women’s Guild, and the Lutheran Women’s Association of South Australia. Fritsch served on the Ladies’ Committee of Emmanuel College from 1942-1971 and represented the Lutheran Women’s Association at the Women’s Jubilee Convention in Canberra in 1951. In 1954 she went to Minneapolis, USA, to the LWF (Lutheran Womens’ Federation?) assembly. She had 5 daughters who all graduated from the University of Adelaide.

Helen Jericho (née Vogelsang) was born 20 August 1896 at Kapperamanna, an outpost of Bethesda Mission near the Birdsville Track. Her father was a lay missionary, and one of the founders of Bethesda Mission. She left the Mission after her father’s death in 1916, and married in 1920

Joyce McConnell was appointed to the Order of the British Empire on 12 June 1976 for community services. She was an active member of a number of national women’s groups and Australian Capital Territory associations. McConnell was President of the National Council of Women of Australia, member of the National Women’s Advisory Council, National Women’s Consultative Council and the Federation of University Women. In 1976 McConnell was Australia’s delegate to the International Council of Women conference in Vancouver.

Trade union official Mary Lambert, State secretary of The Australian Hairdressers, Wigmakers & Hairworkers Employees Federation was also a member of many committees within the union movement. She was a union representative on several committees including the State Wages Board, Industrial Training Commission committees and trades committees.

Dianna Lobb, the daughter of Leonard and Violet (née Davidson) Lobb, was educated at Fort Street Girl’s High School, Sydney. In 1978 she became the first woman to review guard at Headquarters 2nd Military District at Victoria Barracks, Sydney. The same year she became commanding officer and chief instructor of the Women’s Royal Australian Army Corps (WRAAC) School, Sydney. On 12 June 1971 Lobb was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire.

Pre-school teacher and educator Heather Lyon was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire on 11 June 1977 for her service to education.

Former primary school teacher Barbara MacLeod joined the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service in 1954. During her service she served in every Australian state except Western Australia. In 1976 MacLeod became the first woman officer of any service to attend the Australian Administrative Staff College (AASC). Three years later she was the first woman naval officer of Captain’s rank to be posted to a male Captain’s position. In 1982 MacLeod became an Honorary Aide-de-Camp (ADC) to Queen Elizabeth. She was the first Australian woman to be appointed as an ADC, a post which had to be relinquished on her retirement. On 9 June 1975 Naval Officer Barbara MacLeod became a Member of the Order of Australia. She was also awarded the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal (1977) and the National Medal (1977) and Bar (1979).

Senior Lecturer and Convener of the Classics Program at the Australian National University (ANU), Dr Ann Moffatt was one of the first women wardens of a mixed hall of residence when acting warden of Bruce Hall at the ANU in 1973.

Moffatt attended Unley High School in Adelaide and University High School, Melbourne, before graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) from the University of Melbourne. She obtained her Master of Arts from the Australian National University and her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of London.

Joyce Nicholson was born in Melbourne, the daughter of publisher D.W. Thorpe. She was educated at Methodist Ladies College before completing a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Melbourne, where she was vice-president of the Student Representative Council. She has been active in the women’s movement, involved in early years with the Women’s Electoral Lobby (W.E.L.) and Sisters Publishing Ltd. She was Managing Director, and later sole owner, of D.W. Thorpe Pty Ltd from 1968 until 1987, when the firm was sold. She is the author of over 25 books, many of them written for children, others dealing with women’s issues.

Daughter of Arthur Walker and his wife Frances (née Sinclair), Ellinor Walker was born in Melbourne, Victoria and moved to Adelaide, South Australia when she was nine years old. She attended the Wilderness School, and was awarded the Tennyson Medal for English at the age of fifteen. Walker graduated as a kindergarten teacher, and spent two years as Director of the Halifax St Free Kindergarten. She then opened the Greenways School at her family home in Fullarton, and directed this for 24 years. At the age of eighteen she and a friend formed a Girls’ Club to study political matters, and this led to her joining, at the age of 21, the Non-Party Association. She was an active member of this for 65 years, and when (as the League of Women Voters, which it had become) it voluntarily ended in 1979, she gave the valedictory speech. She was a passionate supporter of the League of Nations and the movement to maintain world peace. In 1940, with the help of Roma Mitchell (later Governor of South Australia) she drew up the Bill which became the Guardianship of Infants Act, No. 55 (1940), giving mothers equal rights with fathers over their children. In 1962 and 1963 she organised an Australia-wide campaign which resulted in recognition of the needs of civilian widows with dependent children. She was a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). In 1964 she helped form the Local Government Women’s Association, and in 1971 was president of the Women’s Christian Temperance League, of which she had been a member since 1935. Walker wrote several historical pageants and she also wrote a monologue, ‘The Story of the Franchise: How Women Won the Vote in SA’ (1944) for the Golden Jubilee of Women’s Suffrage. Her poem ‘Lullaby’ was set to music by Ruby R McCulloch, and is held in the Mortlock Library. Ellinor Walker was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire on 12 June 1971 for her service to the community.

Octavia Wilson, daughter of Thomas Samson of Berwick upon Tweed, married a congregational minister the Reverend William Wilson (1827-1895) in 1855. They both emigrated to Australia in 1857 and founded Point Pearce Aboriginal mission.

Marlienne Thomson was born at Ceduna, South Australia. After two years as a dental nurse she began training at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) in 1951. When training was completed she had appointments as staff nurse and charge nurse at the RAH. Marlienne attended the College of Nursing, Australia in 1958 and gained a diploma in ward management and teaching. On her return to Adelaide she was active in introducing new procedures at the RAH. She resigned in 1961 to attend the Adelaide Bible Institute and in 1964 went to South India to serve as a missionary at the Christian Medical College and Hospital at Vellore.

Joan Durdin, author of They Became Nurses: A History of Nursing in South Australia, 1836-1980 (1991) and Eleven Thousand Nurses: A History of Nursing Education at the Royal Adelaide Hospital 1889-1993 (1999) is a nursing historian and as a nurse educator has contributed much to the advancement of nursing through the development of advanced education in the higher education sector. In addition to her ten year’s teaching at Royal Adelaide Hospital she spent six years as a nurse educator in Papua New Guinea. She conducted extensive oral history interviews for the Royal Adelaide Hospital Heritage and History Committee, 1991-1998. Durdin is commemorated by the Joan Durdin Oration, an annual event initiated and sponsored by the Department of Clinical Nursing at the University of Adelaide.

Henrietta Greville established her life-long involvement with the labour movement when she moved to the goldfields at West Wyalong, following the breakdown of her marriage to John Collins. Here she pegged out a claim, sold meals to the miners and helped establish a branch of the Political Labor League, as well as meeting her future husband, miner and union organizer, Hector Greville. To help support her family Greville, at times, worked as a seamstress. Later she became an organizer for the Australian Workers’ Union, the Women Workers’ Union, and for some time acted as its delegate at the Trades and Labor Council. As a Labor candidate, Greville was defeated for the federal seat of Wentworth in 1917 and the state seat of Vaucluse in 1927. Greville became associated with the Workers’ Educational Association of New South Wales in 1914 when she joined an economics class. By 1918 she was branch secretary at Lithgow, became a member of the executive in 1919 and the first woman president in 1920. Greville was still active with the association in 1954, at the age of 94. On 1 January 1958 Henrietta Greville was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for social welfare services in New South Wales.

Emma Miller was foundation president of the Woman’s Equal Franchise Association between 1894 and 1905. The vote for women in Queensland State elections was finally won in 1905; women had had the right to vote in Federal elections since Federation, and voted for the first time in the 1903 Federal election. On 2 February 1912, known as Black Friday, at the height of a general strike, Miller led a contingent of women to Parliament House, avoiding police with fixed bayonets. The women were charged by baton swinging police on their return from Parliament House. Miller reputedly stuck her hatpin into a horse ridden by the Police Commissioner, Patrick Cahill. Cahill fell from his horse and claimed to have been permanently injured. Direct political action was not Miller’s only cause. She was anti-militarist and opposed conscription in World War I. She believed that ‘those who make the quarrel should be the only ones to fight’. As vice-president of the Women’s Peace Army, Miller attended the Peace Alliance Conference in Melbourne in 1916. She also fought hard for free speech and civil liberties. During the First World War, Miller preached equal pay to those fearing that women would take the jobs of men away at the war.

Bella Guérin became the first woman to graduate from an Australian university when she was awarded her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Melbourne (number 255) in December 1883. She taught first at Loreto Convent, Ballarat then as lady principal of Ballarat School of Mines university classes, resigning upon marriage to Henry Halloran. A civil servant and poet, Halloran married Guérin on 28 June 1891 aged 80. Following his death Guérin married George D’Arcie Lavender.

Bella Guérin was politically active and a member of the suffrage movement. She became vice-president of the Women’s Political Association in 1912, and later joined the Labor Party.

Anna Brennan, member of a talented Victorian family, was a devout Catholic who actively pursued the cause of women’s equality throughout her life. She was one of the earliest woman to graduate in law at the University of Melbourne in 1909 and practised as a solicitor in her brother’s legal firm for fifty years. She was a foundation member of the Lyceum Club in 1912 and president from 1940-41.

The Victorian Legal Women’s Association was established in 1931 with Brennan serving as president. A founding committee member of the Catholic Women’s Social Guild in 1916, later the Catholic Women’s League, she served as president from 1918-1920. She joined the Victorian branch of St Joan’s International Alliance, holding the office of president from 1938-1945 and again in 1948 until her death in 1962.

On 29 November 1924 a ceremony of the Perpetual Profession of Dr Mary Glowrey, now Sister Mary of the Sacred Heart took place in the Church of St Agnes at Guntur (India). Mary Glowrey, who completed her medical training at the University of Melbourne, (MBBS 1910, MD 1919), was the first president of the Catholic Women’s Social Guild (now Catholic Women’s League). After receiving assurance from the Pope that she would be allowed to continue in her profession, Glowrey left Melbourne for India in 1920. At this time nuns were still prevented from practising medicine, She entered the Society of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, a Dutch order of nuns and spent the next 37 years involved with medical work in Guntur, India. Glowrey House, the Catholic Women’s League headquarters in Nicholson Street, Fitzroy, is named in her honour.

The daughter of merchant Robert Lindsay and Jane Stocks (née Macfarlane) Jenny Greig graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1895. She devoted her life to the service of women, especially in the field of medicine. One of the founders of the Queen Victoria Hospital when Greig retired in 1948 she had been an active member of the honorary medical staff for over 50 years. When the hospital added a new pathology block in 1937 it was named after her. Greig is recognized as the first woman anaesthetist in Victoria: she was honorary anaesthetist at the Women’s Hospital in Melbourne from 1900 to 1917, honorary assistant anaesthetist at the Melbourne Hospital in 1903 and was admitted as a member of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1940. Greig died will visiting London in 1950.

On 26 January 1998 Nina Buscombe was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the community through the Motor Neurone Disease Association of Victoria, the Victorian School for Deaf Children, the Victorian Council of Social Service, and Zonta. In 1987 she was honoured with an Anzac of the Year Award for her contribution to the community and the Motor Neurone Disease Association of Victoria awarded her a Life Governorship and instituted The Nina Buscombe Award in her honour.

Cecilia John, who sang ‘I Didn’t Raise My Son to Be a Soldier’ until banned by the government under the War Precautions Act of 1915, founded the Women’s Peace Army with Vida Goldstein. Interested in social questions, John was a member of the Collins Street Independent Church, the Women’s Political Association and wrote for the Woman Voter. She established the Children’s Peace Army and ran a women’s co-operative farm, the Women’s Rural Industries Co. Ltd, at Mordialloc, providing employment to women in financial need.

Sally Bowen, who lived most of her adult life in Wollongong, was a prominent union, political and community activist. During her life Bowen was involved with Miners’ Women’s Auxiliaries, the Women’s Centre in Wollongong, the Union of Australian Women, the Save Our Sons movement, the Jobs for Women Campaigns and the Environmental Movement.

Aged fifteen, Eileen Powell joined the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and remained a member for over 45 years. She trained at the Party speakers’ classes in Balmain and became Assistant Secretary of the Stanmore Branch in 1929. After working for Grace Brothers (Broadway) Powell commenced work with the Labor Daily. From 1937 until 1944 she worked with the Australian Railways Union, New South Wales Branch. During this period Powell became an organiser for the Railway Refreshment Rooms (RRR) staff and achieved an Industrial Relations award for them. The mostly women workers were not employed directly by the Railways Department, were not covered by other awards and were dispersed throughout railway towns in New South Wales. On their behalf she appeared before the full bench of the NSW Industrial Commission and when the judgement was handed down there was a cut in the spread of hours, provisions for overtime, increased wages and the abolition of the compulsory board and lodging payments. Powell was also a member of the Council of Action for Equal Pay, the ALP Women’s Central Organising Committee and the United Associations of Women.

Louisa Dunkley co-founded the Victorian Women’s Post and Telegraph Association in 1900. A campaigner for equal pay for women, she joined the Postmaster-General’s Department in 1882. By 1890 Dunkley had passed the proficiency tests and transferred to the Chief Telegraph Office as a telegraphist. In the 1890s she helped to establish a committee of women telegraphists and postmistresses to present a case for equal pay, with their male colleagues in the Post and Telegraph Department of Victoria. They received increases in salary, though not equality with men telegraphists. Because the male union discourages female members the Victorian Women’s Post and Telegraph Association was established in 1900 with Dunkley as vice-president. She represented the association at the telegraphists’ conference in October 1900 at Sydney, where she met her future husband, Edward Charles Kraegen, secretary of the New South Wales and Commonwealth Post and Telegraph associations from 1885 to 1904.

Dr Patricia Clarke is a writer, historian, editor and former journalist, who has written extensively on women in Australian history and media history. Several of her publications are biographies of women writers and others explore the role of letters and diaries in the lives of women. Since the 1980s she has played an active part in national cultural institutions and community organisations in Canberra and her work has been recognised by a number of awards and grants.