Ten Victorian Women

Improperly in the service

The 1890s Depression had disastrous social effects that touched the lives of most people. In Victoria, Section 43 of the Public Service Act 1890 specifically excluded married women from employment in the Public Service. The Teachers Act 1893 exempted those married women appointed before 24 December 1881. For women who ceased teaching under this legislation, more than immediate incomes were lost. Retired married women also had to relinquish claims to accrued compensation or pension, receiving compensation of only one month's pay for each year of service.

Grace Neven began employment with the Education Department in 1878, at the age of 17. She served in several rural state schools as assistant teacher and then head teacher, until the following report was received at the Education Department on 20 March 1893, from District Inspector A. Fussell:

I have the honor to say that it has come to my knowledge that the head teacher of the above school is improperly in the service.

Miss Neven has been married, I understand, for some two years past to a Mr Stevenson. Mr Stevenson almost immediately after his marriage lost his reason, and is now confined in a lunatic asylum.

The memo on the docket of the letter reads:

Urgent

Inform Head teacher that it has come to the knowledge of the Dept. that she is a married woman - say that under the PS Act she has forfeited her position as a teacher and she must at once cease duty. [1]

Neven appealed to the Education Department for a personal interview to discuss her dismissal. An undated and unsigned memo, written after the interview on 5 April 1893, is sympathetic to her situation:

The Inspector General has drawn my attention to this very sad case.

Mrs Stevenson lately Head Teacher of Norong 2454 has lost her employment through a hasty and unfortunate marriage - a marriage which seems to some extent made under coercion.

Her statement to me is that while H.T. of Boho 2796 she was pestered by the attentions of a man named John Stevenson the son of a farmer there who threatened to take her life if she did not marry him. Of course, she should have consulted friends as to dealing with such threats and it must now be a cause of great regret to her that she did not do so. In Oct. 1891 she obtained sick leave from the Department, and went to her parents' house in Brunswick. While there, however, John Stevenson called upon her, and induced her to accompany him to a Registrar's Office, where they were duly married on 6 October 1891.

Mrs Stevenson states that it was a joint understanding that, though bound to each other by marriage vows, they were not in any way to live together and evidence shows that they did not live together as man and wife.

In the month following the marriage, John Stevenson was committed to the Beechworth Asylum, where he still remains in a state of probably hopeless madness.

Hence this unfortunate young woman probably terrified by threats, was through calamitous error of judgement, led into marriage with a man who in all probability was of unsound mind at the time, and who has now not only been for nearly two years in a lunatic asylum; but who seems likely to close his days there. On the other hand, to his wife the disastrous marriage has brought nothing but loss of her position as a teacher, and a prospect of a miserable future.

Mrs Stevenson's statement as to her never living with her husband appears borne out by her own physical condition. I have sent her for examination to the Government Medical Officer who certifies to the truth of her statement on this point. In other words, she is a virgin. [2]

The author advised Grace Neven to seek a dissolution of her marriage on grounds of insanity. She did apply to the Supreme Court for her marriage to be nullified. In the following excerpt from the Case for Opinion of Counsel, her coercion into marriage is clearly described:

The petitioner was a state School Teacher in charge of State School 2796 at Boho East from January 1891 until September 1891 - The School was held in the local church and she used to play harmonium there at Church services.

John Stevenson was the son of a farmer at Boho East and pressed his company upon Petitioner waiting for her after School and after church services and visiting at the house (Pascoes) where she boarded.

On certain occasions he offered her marriage which she at once refused but as there were so few families in the neighbourhood it was impossible to avoid meeting him frequently. On other occasions he afterwards uttered threats as to what he would do if she did not promise to become his wife asserting that he would "destroy her life" and once having followed her to the Three Mile Creek Waterfall near Warrenbayne he threatened to throw her down the precipice a depth of about forty feet if she did not swear to marry him. In great fear and agitation she gave the required promise - This occurred in August 1891.

On account of her unhappy surroundings the Petitioner had already applied to the Education Department to be transferred to a school at a distance from Boho East - meanwhile in September 1891 she became ill and was granted sick leave by the Department ... [3]

Neven was granted a decree nisi and reinstated as a fifth-class teacher. Her subsequent career was wrought with illness, resignations and re-employment. She married again in 1900, but was later deserted by her husband. Her final position was as head teacher at Nurcoung, school no. 2768. In 1915 Grace Knight, as she was then, took sick leave from the school. Her temporary replacement, Miss Eva Botham, wrote to her mother describing the living conditions for the teacher. Eva Botham's father passed on the letter to the Education Department in an attempt to secure his daughter's transfer to another school. Her letter reads:

It is 2 miles, and one mile is nothing but heavy sand, with two long and fairly steep hills in it. Then there is slush, so that I couldn't walk ... It's really too far to walk every morning and night, the sand makes it so heavy and then study at night ... The permanent teacher here - Mrs Knight, lives a very secluded life in the two rooms at the back; there is no place in sight of the school and I believe she has scarcely any furniture there, and the result is, she is now away on sick leave, and from all accounts, shaping well for an Asylum. She has been saying some very queer things, - thought everybody hated her, also that boys came in middle of the night and threw stones on her roof, and even went as far as to tell the children to strain their ears and listen carefully and they would hear the cries and sufferings of the women and children in Belgium. She has all the records, - roll, work program etc locked up in her room, so I can do nothing. Oh, its horrible here. [4]

Eva Botham's assessment of Neven's condition was accurate. She did not return to her teaching duties. Instead, she was committed by the court and sent to the Receiving House on 30 August 1915. The next day Neven was transferred to the Kew Hospital for the Insane. The report for 10 September reads:

She arrived here firmly trussed up on a stretcher and confined in a strait jacket. On reception she got sedative and purgative by nasal tube, she continued restless and excited until Monday September 6th when she was much more settled and went to bed and has remained in bed ever since. She is now quiet and composed and can speak coherently but has not quite reached stability mentally yet.

Once Neven had become calm enough to interview successfully, a report was written on 15 September regarding the circumstances of her 'mania'. In it the doctor states:

The family history in this case seems favorable, she has been a State School teacher since girlhood with intervals, she made an unfortunate marriage and had to maintain her husband until he left her many years ago, no offspring. For a long time past she has had schools in the back blocks, and lived by herself and did her own housework and difficulty was experienced by her in obtaining a proper supply of provisions, often having to live on damper and such like. She is of a self-sacrificing nature and benevolent, and in order to provide a home for her sister and her mother she invested all her savings, £200, in the purchase of a bee farm, she was apparently taken in over this transaction for she lost her money and the farm, she had neglected her health and the combination caused her to have an attack of Acute Maniacal excitement, she was kept one day at the Receiving House and sent to Kew HI; at the end of the sixth day, she had become quiet and composed and has continued as since, is occasionally apprehensive, otherwise rational. Is in fair bodily health and condition, heart and lungs normal, has ulcer on foot. [5]

In December 1916 Grace Neven was released from Kew on trial leave in the care of her mother. She was officially discharged from Kew in August 1917.

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