The Australian Women's Register

The Children’s Welfare Association of Victoria (CWAV), established in 1912, is the co-ordinating body of non government child welfare agencies in Victoria. It is the peak body for over eighty community organisations delivering child and family support and welfare services. It aims to promote and protect the needs and rights of children and their families; to represent the needs of children and the agencies that assist them, to governments and other organisations; provide co-ordination and communication between welfare agencies and promote high standards in welfare programs. It attempts to meet these aims through holding conferences, producing publications and conducting research projects.

The Housewives Co-operative Association (later the Housewives Association of Victoria) was formed in mid-1915 and soon became one of the largest women’s organisations in the state. The movement, reacting to the spiralling cost of living during World War I, initially aimed mainly at ‘bringing the producer and consumer into direct contact’ and providing discounted goods to members. In 1921, however, it also adopted a clear political objective: ‘To advocate the equal status of women and adequate representation on all boards and tribunals dealing with the home and the cost of living.’ From the 1930s the Association focussed more on the provision of training and information relating to household management and also became more involved in broader activism to improve the civil and political status of women and with other social reform causes.

The Royal Australian Naval Nursing Service (RANNS) was established in October 1942 and Miss Ina Laidlaw became the first matron. The number in the service never exceeded 60.

Captain Kay Parker was one of the six army nurses and eleven civilians who were taken to Japan as Prisoners of War from Rabaul on 23rd January 1942.

Cecilia Downing was a leading figure in the Victorian women’s movement in the early twentieth century, spreading her activities and influence over an enormous range of organisations. The daughter of Isaac and Mary (née Morgan) Hopkins, Downing was born in London and came to Australia in 1858. She obtained her Teaching Certificate from the Training Institution in Carlton and taught at Portarlington before marrying John Downing in 1885. The couple returned to Melbourne in 1901. Although she had seven children, Cecilia became heavily involved in women’s groups and welfare work. She was one of Victoria’s first child probation officers (1907) and was an officer bearer with both the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Australian Women’s National League. From the 1920s, she devoted her energies to the Housewives Association (having become one of its earliest members in 1917) and served as its federal president from 1940-45 and Victorian president from 1938 until her death in 1952. On 8 June 1950 Cecilia Downing was appointed a Member of the British Empire for social welfare services in Victoria.

Before joining the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF) in 1942, Catherine Frost (née Sommers) was a full time ballet student. She worked part time in the family cycle business as well as competing in track cycle racing and being a member of the New South Wales Flying Club. With the WAAAF she was a fabric worker. Following World War II Frost became a member of a number of community services including the Prince Henry Little Bay Hospital, the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital, Camperdown and the Asthma Children’s Foundation, Sutherland. On 26 January 1997 Catherine Frost was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia and she received the Australian Sports Medal on 30 August 2000.

A stenographer with the Department of Motor Transport, Eileen Price (née Lee) enjoyed dancing, surfing and roller skating before joining the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF) on 6 June 1942. As a teleprinter operator, Aircraftwoman Lee was stationed at the Eastern Area Headquarters and the RAAF Station Canberra. After her discharge on 29 October 1945 she married Garnet George McLeod Price. The pair moved to Papua New Guinea when Garnet Price accepted a position as engineer with Guinea Air Traders.

Eileen Price returned to Sydney when she became pregnant, but her husband was killed in an aircraft accident and she raised their daughter, Catherine McLeod Price, with the help of her mother and by taking teaching positions with the Department of Technical Education.

The Governesses’ Institute and Melbourne Home opened in Melbourne in 1863 with the aim of accommodating governesses, shop women, needlewomen and servants and to provide a central employment registry in a self-supporting institution. Its forerunner, the Melbourne Female Home, which opened in September 1857 in temporary premises in Collingwood, provided shelter only for newly arrived single female immigrants who were without friends in the colony. The Governesses’ Institute occupied a number of premises over the course of its existence in Little Lonsdale St. Melbourne, “Wynamo” in St Kilda and “Lovell House” in Caulfield. The governing body comprised a central committee, with nine local or suburban committees. A matron was employed to supervise the Home and its occupants. Strict rules applied; women were only admitted if they arrived on a week day, could pay a week’s board in advance and were without children. In 1863 Mrs Laura Jane a’Beckett was elected secretary of the management committee of six men and twenty-six women. It closed in 1936.

The Catalysts’ Society developed out of the meetings of nineteen women with intellectual interests who planned to establish a Lyceum Club in Melbourne in 1910. The meetings proved so enjoyable that the women decided to meet on a regular basis while waiting for the Lyceum Club to be established. The nineteen original Catalysts held their first dinner meeting on 24 September 1910 at Sargent’s Café. At that meeting they elected Ethel Osborne as president and Alice Michaelis and Jessie Webb as joint secretaries. They adopted the name of ‘The Catalysts’. At their second meeting they chose their motto ‘Changing but Unchanged’. Enid Derham presented the first paper on ‘The works of Thomas Hardy’, which was followed by discussion. This format for the monthly meetings continues today.

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) of Western Australia was founded in 1892, inspired by the visit of Jessie Ackerman, the second world missionary of the American Union. The group is primarily dedicated to promoting total abstinence from alcohol and other harmful drugs and all members sign a pledge to this effect. Under its broader agenda of ‘home protection’ and the promotion of a healthy lifestyle, however, it has been involved in wide range of social and political reform activities mostly relating to the welfare of women and children. Importantly, influenced by its sister organisation in the United States, the WCTU 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 still continues today.

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 Australian Pre-School Association, previously named the Australian Association for Pre-School Child Development, established in 1939, is the national association for the advancement of pre-school development. All major voluntary agencies in Australia who work in the field of pre-school education are affiliates. The Victorian branch was established in 1948 and is acknowledged as the representative voluntary pre-school body in the state. Its role is to make a co-ordinated approach to the state government when legislation related to pre-school groups is being prepared, when standards in pre-school centres are being negotiated or when requests for improved subsidies are under discussion. As a lobby group it has greatly strengthened the pre-school voice.

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.

Founded in 1896 (the first such council in Australia) the National Council of Women of New South Wales is a non-party, non-sectarian, umbrella organisation for a large and diverse number of affiliated women’s organisations. It functions as a political lobby group, particularly for the interests of women and children, attempting to influence local, state and federal government, and as a coordinating body to enable concerted effort on specific issues. The Council emerged as a largely middle-class women’s organisation and, until the 1940s at least, was a major focal point for such women’s activism. Although not overtly feminist, the Council has campaigned for a wide range of social and political reforms.

The Austral Salon of Music, Literature and the Arts was founded by a small group of women journalists in Melbourne as a club for women writers. It developed into a club for artistic and intellectual women interested in any of the fine arts and provided an important entre for many aspiring women musicians. The Salon continues it main aim of encouraging young artists by awarding scholarships and hosting student performances.

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.

The Gentlewomen’s Aid Society was established in 1894 in the Williamstown home of Mrs John Clark, wife of the Reverend Clark, in an attempt to assist the many ‘gentlewomen’ who were left destitute as a result of the 1890s economic depression. Eligibility for membership rested on a recommendation from a committee member, a medical practitioner or a clergyman stating that the applicant was in genuine need of the Society’s assistance. The Society held two Sales of Work a year in a public hall to enable ‘those ladies who are dependent on their own exertions to sell their work’ and were either too frail or too old to battle the commercial world. The Society depended on donations and subscriptions to assist with operating costs. It remained in existence until 1989, when it was dissolved as a result of dwindling membership and declining demand for assistance the Society offered.

On 1 July 2003 a dedication of a WRANS Memorial, formally recognising Harman as ‘The Birthplace of the WRANS,’ was held. The WRANS Memorial HMAS Harman is dedicated to those who have served in the Woman’s Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS) and those females who have and are currently serving in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN).

One of the original fourteen females to join the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), Jess Scott Doyle (née Prain) was the inspiration for the creation of a lasting memorial to all those in the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS) during the war and later in peacetime. Under her direction a memorial committee raised funds and completed research and design details for the window memorial. Arthur Griffiths and Patrick Pearce of Celtic Studios completed the memorial in time for the RANS 75th anniversary ceremonies in 1986.

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.