The Australian Women's Register

Elsie Morgan, wife of Theodore Herbert Morgan, a prominent member of the Australian Labor Party, was elected to the Sugar Board of Inquiry in 1930-1931 as the representative for Western Australia. At that time, she was the founder of the Housewives Association of W.A., President of the Consumers’ Vigilance Committee, and a member of the Executive of the Women’s Service Guild.

Jennie Baines was a prominent feminist and socialist in both Britain and Australia. Born in Birmingham, the daughter of a gunmaker, she was sent to work in a factory when she was just 11. She soon joined her parents in their Salvation Army work. She married George Baines in 1888 and had five children. In 1905 she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union, becoming a full-time organiser. She was imprisoned 15 times and in 1913 was smuggled out of the country to Melbourne with her family. Once there, she worked for the Women’s Political Association and joined the Women’s Peave Army. With Adela Pankhurst Walsh she campaigned tirelessly against the war and conscription. She also joined the Socialist Part in 1917. In the years after World War One she continued to work in both the Labor and Socialist parties.

Eva Pethybridge was a women’s activist and advocate for peace with enduring associations with numerous women’s organisations. In 1946, she became Honorary Secretary of the Australian Women’s Charter, a group that was created in 1942 to consider problems concerning women in wartime. The charter was intended to embody the aims of women’s organisations and to establish equal opportunity, public welfare, status and remuneration. During the following decades Eva Pethybridge was President of the League of Women Voters of Victoria, committee member of the Australian Federation of Women Voters, member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the United Nations Association of Australia.

The Australian Women’s Guild of Empire was founded in 1928 by Adela Pankhurst Walsh. It was modelled on and affiliated with the London based Women’s Guild of Empire.
The Guild initially raised money for working class women and children hit by the Depression. It also advocated the need for industrial cooperation, and Pankhurst frequently spoke out against strikes. It was a conservative, patriotic organisation which developed strong anti-communist sentiments.

Christina Brown arrived in Western Australia in 1896. She was one of the first students at Claremont Teachers’ College, graduating in 1902, and married Thomas Blake in 1906. After his death, she became Western Australian’s first woman sworn valuator, first woman to be a commissioner for declarations, and unsuccessfully stood for parliament as an independent candidate for Leederville-North Perth in 1927. In 1928, she married Augustus Robert Sewell, son of Frederick Sewell. She was an active member of numerous societies, most notably the Travellers Aid Society of which she became national president, and was awarded the Coronation Medal for social work in 1953.

Edith Moore was the daughter of Sir Thomas a’Beckett, Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria, and Isabella, daughter of Sir Archibald Michie. She married Sir William Harrison Moore, Professor of Law in the University of Melbourne and Constitutional Advisor to the Victorian Government in 1898. She was prominent in numerous organizations: the Travellers’ Aid Society of Victoria; the Country People’s Holiday Camps Association; the National Council of Women; the Housewives’ Association; the Women’s Rural Industries Company; the League of Women Voters of Victoria and other bodies. She continued to be active after the death of her husband in 1935. She died in 1974.

Marie Kirk was a leading figure in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union both in Victoria and nationally and helped to establish the Victorian Union in 1887. She held numerous executive positions in the organisation. She was also a strong supporter of women’s rights, a member of the Victorian Women’s Franchise League, and helped to establish the National Council of Women of Victoria in 1902. She supported equal pay, raising the age of consent for girls, and also took a keen interest in the welfare of women prisoners and in the kindergarten movement.

Cummeragunja Reserve was established in New South Wales in 1883 when some of the Aboriginal residents from Maloga Mission, five miles down the river, moved in order to be free of the strict religious lifestyle. It became a thriving and prosperous community and a site of Aboriginal activism in the early twentieth century. On 9 March 1984 the title deeds for the land passed to the Yorta Yorta people through the newly created Yorta Yorta Land Council. Today, many Aboriginal families reside on Cummeragunja.

Ebenezer Mission Station began on 10 January 1859, with the school opening on 17 January with one pupil. Two other boys joined the school the next day. Sixty people were at the Mission station by the end of March. However, it was obvious that the Aboriginal people had no intention of staying there permanently. It was not until the middle of April that the three pupils came back to the school.
Despite these beginnings, with circumstances beyond their control, the Wotjobaluk and Wergaia from the area began to settle on the station and the 1901 report to the Board states that 40 people were registered as permanent residents. The schoolteacher, Miss Isabel Tyre taught 30 children.
In 1904, the Mission was closed and the Moravian Mission Board wrote to the Board for the Protection of Aborigines, thanking them for their support and asking the government to make a permanent reserve of the burial land because it had five of their missionaries buried there. The Lake Hindmarsh Land Act (1904) revoked the Reserve and the land was made available for selection, however, the cemetery was made a Permanent Reserve.
Ebenezer Mission was the home to many Aboriginal women, some of whom became prominent Aboriginal spokespersons.

Mavis Thorpe Clark was a prolific writer of children’s fiction who, in late life, also wrote for adults. In the process of researching her first adult book, Pastor Doug, the biography of Sir Douglas Nicholls, she created a large archive of letters and correspondence of relevance to indigenous scholarship.

Lena Santospirito was one of the first Italo-Australian women to assume a leadership role in the provision of welfare and community services to Melbourne’s Italian community. The Australian born daughter of Italian parents who migrated to Australia in the 1890s, Mrs Santospirito was the first woman (and layperson) to be appointed President of the Archbishop’s Committee for Italian Relief. She held this position between 1946 and 1955, a period that coincided with the beginnings of mass migration from Italy to Australia. Her energy and generosity in this role, as she combined it with her responsibilities as a wife and mother, were recognised by the Italian government in 1958 when she was awarded the Italian Star of Solidarity.

After her resignation from the committee in 1955, Mrs Santospirito continued her community work for various religious and charitable organisations. She passed away in 1983 and is remembered for her tireless work, her faith and the generosity she showed to so many people in Melbourne’s Italian community.

The Women’s Abortion Action Campaign was established in Sydney in 1972 as one element of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Its main focus was to mobilize support for the repeal of abortion laws, which involved primarily public meetings, demonstrations and conferences. It also lobbied members of parliament before elections and disseminated information about the legal status and availability of abortion.

Truganini was the daughter of Mangana, chief of the Bruny Island people. A survivor of The Black Wars that accompanied European settlement in Tasmania, her life epitomises the story of colonial encounters in Tasmania, the clash of two disparate cultures and the resistance and survival of indigenous Tasmanians.

After losing her mother, her sister and her prospective husband at a young age, all of them the victims of colonial violence, Truganini worked hard in the early 1830s to unify what was left of the indigenous communities of Tasmania. An intelligent, energetic and resourceful woman, she worked with white authorities to protect other survivors of The Black Wars who had been forcibly removed from their homelands. In 1830 George Augustus Robinson, a Christian missionary was hired to round up the rest of the indigenous population and he settled them on Flinders Island. Truganini and her husband, Woorrady, helped Robinson in this venture in the hope that removing them would protect them from further violence. Unfortunately, the shock of resettlement, combined with the unsanitary conditions the people were forced to live in, proved fatal and the resettlement program did not work. The result was the virtual annihilation of the one hundred or so people left – mainly due to malnutrition and illness.

Truganini went with Robinson to Port Phillip in 1839 where a similar settlement was attempted with mainland nations, again with disastrous results. This time, having learnt from the Tasmanian experience, Truganini joined with the Port Phillip people when they resisted Robinson’s plans but she was captured and sent back to Flinders Island.

In 1856 there were only a few remaining indigenous survivors left in Tasmania, Truganini among them, who were taken to Oyster Bay. By 1873, except for Truganini, all of the people taken there had died. Truganini was moved to Hobart where she died in 1876. She had no known descendants.

Even in death she was not left in peace. Her skeleton was on display in the Tasmanian Museum from 1904 to 1907. It was not until 1976 that her remains received a proper burial. Aboriginal rights workers cremated Truganini and spread her ashes on the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, close to her birthplace.

Despite being labelled as such for many years, Truganini was not the ‘last Tasmanian Aborigine’, as the population of mixed descent Aboriginal people living in Tasmania readily attests to. Nevertheless, the story of her life and death remains immensely important, not only as a symbol of the plight of indigenous Australians, but as an example of the insensitivity of museum practices.

Diane E. Barwick was born in Canada in 1938. She arrived in Australia in 1960, and received her doctoral degree from the Australian National University, Canberra. Her work on the history of Aboriginal communities in Victoria (particularly Coranderrk, Framlingham and Lake Tyers) resulted in a number of publications, including her book Rebellion at Coranderrk, published posthumously in 1998. She contributed many articles, book chapters, pamphlets, manuscripts and photographs to Aboriginal scholarship, and was the co-founder of the journal Aboriginal History, which she also edited from 1978 to 1982. She was also actively involved in a number of Aboriginal issues, and was on the Aboriginal Treaty Committee.

Throughout her career, she worked to make history more accessible to Aboriginal people through genealogies and biographies. In 1984 she published a journal article, “Mapping the Past: An Atlas of Victorian Clans, 1835-1904”, which was a major reference for the compilation of a large Aboriginal biographical index at the AIATSIS. Her work was stopped short by her death in 1986.

Joy Lindrum Gillan is a writer and member of The Society of Women Writers (Australia). Lindrum Gillan was President of New South Wales Branch of the Society, 1984-1986, and Federal President of the Society, 1986-1988.

The Society of Women Writers (Australia), Canberra Magazine Branch existed for four years, 1984-87. Upon the demise of the Branch, members joined the Fellowship of Australian Writers.

Florence James (1902-1993) was a novelist, editor and reviewer. She was born in New Zealand and educated at Sydney University where she began her long association with Dymphna Cusack. Together James and Cusack wrote two books, ‘Four Winds and a Family’, a story for children, and ‘Come in Spinner’ which won the Sydney Daily Telegraph prize in 1948.
Florence James went to England in 1927. She shared a bedsitting room with Christina Stead for a short time, and worked mainly as a journalist and independent literary agent until her return to Australia in 1938. James went to England again in 1947 and from 1951 worked as an independent literary agent and reader for Constable and Co. and for Richmond, Towers and Benson Limited. While in London she acted as a talent scout for Australian and New Zealand writers including Mary Durack, Nene Gare, Maurice Shadbolt, David Martin and Sylvia Ashton-Warner.
James maintained a close friendship with many of the women she met at University and with the writers whose work she promoted. In the early 1970s she became an active member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia. James married William (‘Pym’) Heyting in 1932. They divorced in 1948. They had two daughters. Florence James died in 1993.

Kathleen Margaret Maria Sherrard, MSc, was a demonstrator and lecturer in geology at the University of Melbourne for over a decade in the years after World War I. She also published articles on palaeontology.

After her marriage and relocation to Sydney she served on a Commonwealth Committee on Nutrition, 1944-1945, and took an active role in many women’s organisations, particularly the Australian Federation of University Women and United Associations of Women, as well as scientific workers organisations.

The World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, New South Wales Commission, Women’s Work Department was established to organise exhibits of women’s work from New South Wales to be sent to the Columbian Exposition.

The Women’s Voluntary National Register was set up under the Commonwealth Minister for Defence to encourage women to register their capacities for the particular service they wished to give in doing war work

The ANZAC Fellowship of Women was founded in 1921 by Dr Mary Booth, with the object of fostering the commemorative character of ANZAC day as an inspiration to future generations. Booth remained president of the group until 1956. In 1930 a London branch was also established. From 1931-41, and again from 1950, the ANZAC Festival Committee was established to emphasise the value of the Arts in helping to foster the ANZAC tradition. The group also established the Empire Service Club for Boy Settlers in 1923, which organised welcome parties for ‘Dreadnought’ boys and represented the first welfare work instituted for them.

The Women’s Abortion Action Coalition Melbourne, established in 1972, was associated with the Women’s Abortion Action Campaign Sydney. Using methods similar to those of the Sydney organisation, it held public meetings, demonstrations, conferences and lobbied members of parliament to campaign for support for repeal of the abortion laws in Victoria. The Women’s Abortion Action Coalition attracted the participation of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) women and reached the stage where between 1974 and 1976 almost all the members comprised SWP members. After a socialist feminist day held in early 1978, a new WAAC group emerged in Melbourne.

The Girls’ Secondary Schools’ Club was formed in Sydney in 1927, registered under that name in 1928 and incorporated as a limited liability company. It provided a meeting place in the city for members of the ex-student unions of, initially, ten independent girls’ schools. Membership rose from 400 in 1928 to 1800 after World War II. The club rooms were initially located in Castlereagh Street until 1930, when the Club relocated to the Gowings building in Market Street, Sydney, where it remained until its closure, due to falling membership and increased costs, in 1994.

The Sydney Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded in 1882, at a meeting hosted by Mr Eli Johnson, a visiting American temperance lecturer. From 1884, other local Unions were started in suburbs of Sydney as well as in country areas of New South Wales. In 1890, a Colonial Union, to be known as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of New South Wales, was formed to embrace the whole colony. The local Union, however, was to remain as the important unit of power.

The Union is primarily dedicated to promoting total abstinence from alcohol and other harmful drugs and all members sign a pledge to this effect. However, under its broader agenda of ‘home protection’ and the promotion of a healthy lifestyle, and in its belief that the dangers of alcohol could not be tackled in isolation, the group has pursued a very wide-ranging reform agenda mostly relating to the welfare of women and children. Importantly, influenced by its sister organisation in the United States, the Union became a major supporter of the campaign for women’s suffrage in Australia as it was believed that power at the ballot box was the only way to achieve their goals. While at its most influential in the years up to WWI, the movement continues today.

The first local Union in Queensland was formed in Brisbane in September 1885, inspired by the visit of Mary Leavitt, the world missionary of the American Union. Mrs W. Steele was elected first president. The following year The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of Queensland was formed at the first Colonial convention. The Union is primarily dedicated to promoting total abstinence from alcohol and other harmful drugs and all members sign a pledge to this effect. However, under its broader agenda of ‘home protection’ and the promotion of a healthy lifestyle, and in its belief that the dangers of alcohol could not be tackled in isolation, the group has pursued a very wide-ranging reform agenda mostly relating to the welfare of women and children. Importantly, influenced by its sister organisation in the United States, the Union became a major supporter of the campaign for women’s suffrage in Australia as it was believed that power at the ballot box was the only way to achieve their goals. At its first meeting in 1886 various Departments of work were formed around Scientific Instruction, Sabbath Schools, Literature Distribution, Hygiene and Press. By 1890 the group had joined the campaign for women’s suffrage and a Suffrage Department was formed. While at its most influential in the years up to WWI, the movement continues today.

The West Australian Housewives’ Association was formed in 1920 for the purpose of protecting the interests of housewives. The final meeting of the Executive was held 3 April, 1984.