Notes

INTRODUCTION

1 http://www.aph.gov.au/Visit_Parliament/Art/Top_5_Treasures/Great_Hall_Tapestry

2 http://www.aph.gov.au/Visit_Parliament/Art/Top_5_Treasures/Great_Hall_Tapestry

3 Only John Gorton bucks the trend: he is in cocky mode, with a red cravat, tan jacket and blue slacks. His portrait is also the only one painted by a female artist, June Mendoza.

4 https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item-did-104.html

5 Jenny Hocking, ‘The palace treats Australia as the colonial child not to be trusted with knowledge of its own history’, Guardian, 6 September 2017.

6 Myra Scott, ‘How Australia Led the Way: Dora Meeson Coates and British Suffrage.’ Canberra: Parliament of Australia, 2003, 46, 53.

7 The Vote, 13 May 1911, 27.

8 Jessie Ackermann, Australia From a Woman’s Point of View. London, Cassell, 1913, vii.

9 ‘Women’s Banner is Coming Home’, National Times, 11 October 1987, NAA A463 1987/3770

10 Email correspondence with Samantha Pollock, Acting Assistant Director, Art Collection & Exhibitions, Parliament House, 3 July 2017, and Lachlan Murray, Collection Management Officer, Art Collection & Exhibitions, Parliament House, 10 July 2017.

11 See for example Barbara Caine, ‘Australian Feminism and the British Militant Suffragettes.’ In Department of the Senate Occasional Lecture Series. Canberra: Parliament of Australia, 2003; Susan Magarey, Passions of the First Wave Feminists, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2001, 188; Ann Nugent, ‘Nellie Alma Martel and the Women’s Social and Political Union, 1905–09.’ Hecate 31, no. 1 (2005); Angela Woollacott, ‘Australian Women’s Metropolitan Activism: From Suffrage to Imperial Vanguard to Commonwealth Feminism.’ In Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation, Race, edited by Ian Fletcher. Oxon: Routledge, 2012; James Keating, ‘“The Defection of the Women”: The New Zealand Contagious Diseases Act Repeal Campaign and Transnational Feminist Dialogue in the Late Nineteenth Century.’ Women’s History Review 25, no. 2 (2016): 187–206; James Keating, ‘“An Utter Absence of National Feeling”: Australian Women and the International Suffrage Movement 1900–1914.’ Australian Historical Studies 47, no. 3 (2016): 462–81; Kate Laing, ‘“The White Australia Nettle”: Women’s Internationalism, Peace and the White Australia Policy in the Interwar Years.’ History Australia 14, no. 2 (2017): 218–36.

12 Brougham Villiers. ‘Introduction.’ In The Case for Women’s Suffrage, edited by Brougham Villiers, 1–21. London: T.H. Unwin, 1907, 10

13 https://lowyinstitutepoll.lowyinstitute.org/democracy/

14 http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/broken-democracy/5996650

15 http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/9-in-10-americans-are-disillusioned-with-democracy/

16 Dora Montefiore, ‘Why Women Need Woman Suffrage; and Why We Need It Now.’ Shafts, December (1896).

17 To better understand the mindset, see for example Marilyn Lake, ‘Personality, Individuality, Nationality: Feminist Conceptions of Citizenship, 1902–1940.’ Australian Feminist Studies 9, no. 19 (1994): 25–38; Marilyn Lake, ‘State Socialism for Australian Mothers: Andrew Fisher’s Radical Maternalism in International and Local Contexts.’ Labour History 102, no. May (2012): 55–70; Judith Smart, ‘Modernity and Mother-Heartedness: Spirituality and Religious Meaning in Australian Women’s Suffrage and Citizenship Movements.’ In Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation and Race, edited by Ian Christopher et al. Oxon: Routledge, 2012.

18 A.G. Gardiner, Pillars of Society. London: James Nisbet, 1913, 273.

19 Gardiner, 274.

20 Ackermann, Woman’s Point of View, 3.

21 Ackermann, Woman’s Point of View, 262.

22 Bernard Keane, ‘Australia Bids for Global Village Idiot Status once more’, Crikey, 27 June 2017.

23 Senator Thomas Glassey, Commonwealth Franchise Bill, Second Reading, 10 April 1902.

CHAPTER 1: THE RISING SUN

1 ‘The Dawn of Federation’, Queenslander, 19 January 1901, 124.

2 ‘The Australian Commonwealth, The Dawn of a Nation’, Launceston Examiner, 1 January 1901, 6

3 ‘Our Nation’s Natal Day’, Adelaide Observer, 5 January 1901, 13.

4 ‘The Dawn of Federation’, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 December 1900 3. O’Sullivan promoted an audacious scheme to immortalise the foundation of the Australian Commonwealth with a Statue of Liberty style monument, appealing to England for funds to build a great national memorial infinitely superior to that of ‘Liberty’ in New York Harbor, or ‘Germania’ on the Rhine. The statue would be situated on a little island in Sydney Harbour, upon which is an obsolete fortification called Fort Denison. This way, the passengers and crew of every ship that sailed through Sydney Harbour would see it: thousands of Australians would contemplate with pride…the great event which it commemorates, and millions of international visitors would salute an event fraught with momentous consequences to mankind. The statue would be called ‘Australia Facing the Dawn’. Despite, or perhaps because of, the extravagant claims of his pitch, O’Sullivan failed to attract either Australian or English supporters to the scheme he considered the keystone of the democratic arch. Mudgee Guardian, 1 May 1902, 15.

5 ‘The New Nation’, National Advocate, 1 January 1901, 2.

6 ‘Australia: A Nation’s Birth’, Adelaide Advertiser, 1 January 1901, 7.

7 ‘A New Century, A New Nation’, Adelaide Observer, 5 January 1901, 29.

8 ‘Our Nation’s Natal Day’, Adelaide Observer, 5 January 1901, 13.

9 ‘The New Nation and the New Century’, Table Talk, 3 January 1901, 21.

10 ‘The New-Born Nation’, Barrier Miner, 16 February 1901, 5.

11 Adelaide Chronicle, 25 May 1901, 37.

12 ‘The Australian Commonwealth and the Dawn of Australian Unity’, Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 5 January 1901, 8.

13 Margaret, Anderson, When Australia Was a Woman: Images of a Nation. Perth: Western Australian Museum, 1998, 6.

14 Anderson, 9.

15 Anderson, 12.

16 quoted in Gavin Souter, Lion and Kangaroo: The Initiation of Australia. Melbourne: Text, 1976, 48.

17 Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Young Queen’. Kipling later added a subtitle to the poem to remind readers of the original context: ‘The Commonwealth of Australia, inaugurated New Year’s Day 1901’, http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/rg_youngqueen1.htm

18 Souter, 51.

19 Souter, 23.

20 Ada Cambridge, Thirty Years in Australia, quoted in Florence Gay, In Praise of Australia: An Anthology in Prose and Verse. London: Constable, 1912, 59.

21 Alice Zimmern, Women’s Suffrage in Many Lands. London: The Athenaeum Press, 1909, foreword.

22 Irene, Cockroft, New Dawn Women: Women in the Arts and Crafts and Suffrage Movement at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century. Compton: Watts Gallery, 2005, 5.

23 The Dawn, 1 May 1899, 7.

24 John Docker, The Nervous Nineties: Australian Cultural Life in the 1890s. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1991, 49.

25 Docker, 49.

26 Marilyn Lake, ‘The Inviolable Woman: Feminist Conceptions of Citizenship in Australia, 1900–1945.’ Gender and History 8, no. 2 (1996), 202.

27 Cockroft, New Dawn Women, 5.

28 Cockroft, 33.

29 Jessie Ackermann, What Women Have Done with the Vote. New York: WM Feakins, 1913, 34.

CHAPTER 2: A CONDITION AKIN TO STUPOR

1 Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 10 March 1900, 9.

2 Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 10 March 1900, 9.

3 Sydney Morning Herald, 22 February 1900.

4 Adelaide Advertiser 22 February 1900.

5 quoted in Janet McCalman, Sex and Suffering: Women’s Health and a Women’s Hospital, Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1998.

6 McCalman, 133.

CHAPTER 3: THE SHRIEKING SISTER HOOD

1 https://www.thoughtco.com/susan-b-anthony-quotes-3525404

2 Vida was named after her maternal uncle, David Hawkins. Bessie Rischbieth Papers, National Library of Australia, MS MS2004. 2004/4/42a. She was keen that her then unusual name be pronounced correctly: Vida with an ‘eye’. Goldstein was similarly pronounced ‘stine’, not ‘steen’. Henderson, Leslie. Vida Goldstein 1869–1949: Biographical notes by her niece, Leslie M. Henderson, 1966 January, State Library of Victoria, MS 7930.

3 Bomford, Janette M. That Dangerous and Persuasive Woman: Vida Goldstein. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1993, 1.

4 Tregenza, John. Professor of Democracy: The Life of Charles Henry Pearson, 1830–1894, Oxford Don and Australian Radical. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 1968, 78.

5 Vida Goldstein papers.

6 This theory of Dugdale’s motivation is proposed by her biographer, Susan Priestley, Henrietta August Dudgale: An Activist 1827–1918. Melbourne: Melbourne Books, 2011.

7 Argus, 13 April 1869, 7.

8 For further details on the goldrush origins of women’s suffrage see Clare Wright, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2013, 450–453; Clare Wright, ‘Golden Opportunities: The Early Origins of Women’s Suffrage in Victoria’, Victorian Historical Journal, Women’s Suffrage Centenary Issue, vol. 79, no. 2, 2008, 210–24.

9 Ballarat Times, 12 September 1856.

10 Woman’s Sphere, Issue 1, September 1900, 4.

11 ‘Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto’, or ‘I am human, and I think that nothing of that which is human is alien to me.’

12 Table Talk, 27 October 1899, 5.

13 ‘News of the Day’, Age, 15 August 1899, 4.

14 The WOMAN’S SPHERE, September 1900, 2.

15 The Rural Australian, 1894.

16 Age, 3 March 1900, 9.

17 Truth, 4 March 1900, 6.

18 The Woman’s Sphere, December 1900, 34.

19 Tocsin, 16 January 1902, 7.

20 The Woman’s Sphere, June 1901, 81.

CHAPTER 4: THEY DID WHAT THEY COULD

1 Darling Point is what is now known as Edgecliff in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. The Octagon forms one of the four-hectare complex of buildings of Ascham School, an elite private school for girls.

2 Dora Montefiore, From a Victorian to a Modern. London: E. Archer, 1927, 30.

3 On 17 July 1889, George died at sea on his return from a business trip to London. He was on board the SS Britannia, near Albany in Western Australia, when he suffered a strangulated hernia. He was thirty-eight years old.

4 Dora Montefiore, From a Victorian, 30.

5 Dora Montefiore, From a Victorian, 6.

6 https://www.constitutionalcentre.wa.gov.au/ExhibitionsOnline/ANationAtLast/Pages/The1891NationalAustraliaAustraliasianConvention.aspx

7 Dora Montefiore, From a Victorian, 32.

8 Northern Star, 4 March 1891, 5.

9 Sydney Morning Herald, 22 April 1891, 4.

10 Dora Montefiore, From a Victorian, 39.

11 Australian Star, 14 May 1891, 2.

12 Express and Telegraph, 14 May 1891, 2.

13 Dora Montefiore, From a Victorian, 6.

14 National Advocate, 10 June 1891, 1.

15 Lady Windeyer, quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, 10 June 1891, 4.

16 Dora Montefiore, From a Victorian, 7.

17 Daily Telegraph, 16 May 1891, 1.

CHAPTER 5: SETTING THE TORRENS ON FIRE

1 John Cockburn, The Working of Woman Suffrage in New Zealand and South Australia. This speech, delivered by Cockburn in London in 1897, was published as a pamphlet by the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. The Women’s Library, London School of Economics, PC/06/396-11/35.

2 South Australian Register, 14 April 1890, 5.

3 Adelaide Observer, 15 August 1891, 8.

4 Catherine Helen Spence, Catherine Helen Spence: An Autobiography. Adelaide: WK Thomas, 1910, 164.

5 Vida Goldstein, Review of Reviews, 20 June 1904.

6 Spence, Autobiography, 24.

7 Spence, Autobiography, 37.

8 South Australian Register, 14 April 1890, 5.

9 Until the early twentieth century, ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’ were loose groupings of individuals with mutual vested interests rather than formal political parties. Conservatives generally represented property and pastoral concerns, and dominated the upper houses of colonial parliaments where only those who met property qualifications were eligible for election. John Hirst, The Strange Birth of Colonial Democracy, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1988, 2.

10 Audrey Oldfield, Woman Suffrage in Australia: A Gift or a Struggle? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 25.

11 South Australian Chronicle, 5 December 1891, 3.

12 Differences in the spelling of Labour/Labor abound in this early period of formalised political parties. The Australian Labor Party, founded as a federal party after the first sitting of the Australian Parliament in 1901, used Labour until 1912 when it switched to Labor. To avoid confusion, this book uses the modern spelling throughout.

13 Margaret Glass, Charles Cameron Kingston: Federation Father. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997, 91.

14 This is Glass’s theory.

15 Alfred Deakin, The Federal Story. Melbourne: Robertson, 1944, 35.

16 quoted in Glass, Charles Cameron Kingston, 103.

17 Spence, Autobiography, 77.

18 South Australian Register, 18 December 1884, 4.

19 South Australian Chronicle, 22 December 1894, 30.

20 Adelaide Observer, 22 December 1894, 27.

21 Adelaide Observer, 22 December 1894, 27.

22 W. Sidney Smith, Outlines of the Women’s Franchise Movement in New Zealand. Dunedin: Whitcombe and Tomes, 1902, 3.

23 Smith, Women’s Franchise Movement, 31.

24 Lady Anna Stout, Adult Suffrage in New Zealand, The Women’s Library, LSE. PC/06/396–11/35, leaflet no. 21.

25 https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/womens-suffrage/about-the-petition

26 W. Sidney Smith, Women’s Franchise Movement, 84.

27 Rt Hon Richard Seddon, Speech to Deputation, Hotel Cecil, London, 7 August 1902, published as a penny pamphlet. The Women’s Library, LSE. PC/06/396–11/35.

28 quoted in James Keating, ‘The Defection of the Women’, 191.

29 William Pember Reeves, State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand. London: Grant Richards, 1902, 112.

30 WP Reeves, State Experiments, 103.

31 quoted in Helen Irving, To Constitute a Nation: A Cultural History of Australia’s Constitution. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 174.

CHAPTER 6: A SERIES OF MIRACLES

1 Bunyip, 9 April 1897, 2.

2 The Vote, 19 February 1910.

3 Perth Daily News, 1 April 1910.

4 Deakin, The Federal Story, 166.

5 Irving, To Constitute a Nation, x.

6 quoted in Irving, To Constitute a Nation, 8.

7 Spence, Autobiography, 81.

8 Spence, Autobiography, 93.

CHAPTER 7: NATIONAL HOUSEKEEPING

1 Nellie’s brother was David Morley Charleston, who won a seat in the South Australian Parliament on the United Labor Party ticket in 1891. After his victory, the South Australian Register noted his pro-suffrage sentiments: Recognising the success achieved at the polling booth was largely due to the women of South Australia he said he hoped the time was not far distant when they would be able to exercise their influence in a more direct manner. In 1891, David Charleston, along with Mary Lee and Catherine Helen Spence, made a deputation to the staunch anti-suffrage premier, Thomas Playford, arguing for the justice of the female franchise.

2 Daily Telegraph, 22 February 1896, 2.

3 Nellie Martel, The Women’s Vote in Australia. London: The Women’s Press, 1907, 1–2.

4 Barrier Miner, 1 April 1897, 3.

5 Adelaide, Petition No 2. In favour of equal voting rights for both sexes in elections for Federal Parliaments. From Women’s Suffrage League of New South Wales. National Archives of Australia, R216, 2.

6 Pember Reeves, State Experiments, 127.

7 Sunday Times, 4 April 1897, 11.

8 Launceston Examiner, 9 April 1897, 3.

9 Deakin, The Federal Story, 73, 59.

10 Pember Reeves, State Experiments, 127.

11 Deakin, The Federal Story, 73.

12 Barrier Miner, 1 April 1897, 3.

13 Maitland Mercury, 17 April 1897, 2.

14 The saying was a common jibe at hot-winded politicians and other bores. See for example The Catholic Press, 4 July 1912, 14; The World’s News, 19 April 1924, 48.

15 Daily Telegraph, 16 April 1867, 6.

16 Ackermann, What Women Have Done, 24.

17 Irving, To Constitute, 179.

18 Oldfield, Gift or Struggle, 51.

19 Argus, 26 April 1900, 7.

20 Marilyn Lake, ‘“In the Interests of the Home”: Rose Scott’s Feminist Opposition to Federation.’ In Makers of Miracles: The Cast in the Federation Story, edited by David Williams and John Headon, Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2000, 125.

21 quoted in Lake, Interests, 125.

22 quoted in Irving, To Constitute, 184.

23 quoted in Irving, To Constitute, 186.

24 Helen Irving, Gender and the Constitution: Equity and Agency in Comparative Constitutional Design. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 14.

CHAPTER 8: THE GREAT DAY

1 Alexandra Hasluck (ed), Audrey Tennyson’s Vice-Regal Days: The Australian Letters of Audrey Lady Tennyson. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1978, 156–157.

2 Brisbane Worker, 26 January 1901, 3. The full quote is interesting, and runs counter to the mass outpouring of imperial grief. A good woman, a good wife and mother has passed away. But, happily, the world still contains many more such. She was of the same flesh as all other women, and subject to the same natural law… For the adversity or the prosperity of the British nation during her reign, therefore, the dead Queen is not to be regarded as responsible. As a ruler she had to do as she was instructed by her ministers. As a woman it is that Her Majesty is to be judged. And in this respect, when all is said and done, she was no better or no worse than most women. The Sydney Truth borrowed the same sentiment two years later, in order to kick suffragists who were attempting to rise above their station. Queen Victoria was a good woman, a good wife, and mother; but she was not the only good woman the world has ever known, though she is one of the few who never had any temptation to be otherwise. Sydney Truth, 8 February 1903, 8.

3 The future George V was created Duke of York in 1892 and was usually referred to by that title until he ascended the throne in 1910. On Queen Victoria’s death he inherited the title of Duke of Cornwall and was briefly known as the Duke of Cornwall and York.

4 ‘Cutting the painter’ was the Federation-era idiom for loosening constitutional ties with England with a view to Australia becoming a republic. See for example, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 February 1902, 8. The expression refers to the seafaring term meaning ‘to set adrift’ when cutting a ship loose from its moorings.

5 Elections for the seventy-five seats in the inaugural Parliament of Australia were held on 29 and 30 March 1901. Voting was voluntary and the franchise was determined by each state’s laws; accordingly, South Australian and Western Australian women could exercise their right to determine the new nation’s lawmakers. Indigenous South Australians were also eligible to vote, and some probably did.

6 Margaret Anderson makes the point that although the new nation was invariably described in the feminine, there was ‘a profound disjunction between allegorical women and actual women’s social and political boundaries’ in the Victorian/Edwardian era. Anderson, When Australia Was a Woman, 14.

CHAPTER 9: MAY 1901

1 Evening News, 26 February 1897, 7.

2 Sydney Morning Herald, 9 June 1898, 7.

3 Worker, 22 October 1898, 7. The public spat was between Rose Scott and Henry Willis. Nellie appears to have been caught in the middle.

4 Sydney Morning Herald, 23 April 1898, 1.

5 Evening News, 16 June 1899, 3.

6 Mountaineer, 16 June 1899, 2.

7 Sydney Morning Herald, 17 June 1899, 10.

8 quoted in Judith Allen, Rose Scott: Vision and Revision in Feminism. Melbourne: Oxford University Publishing, 1994, 199.

9 Truth, 2 December 1900, 6.

10 Scott’s biographer, Judith Allen, describes the fallout more delicately: ‘hasty motions of censure, half-hearted apologies and eventual stand-offs resulted’.

11 quoted in Allen, Rose Scott, 166.

12 Australian Star, 28 Sept 1901, 3.

13 Sydney Morning Herald, 1 October 1901, 9.

14 Worker, 12 October 1901, 8.

15 Robert Wainwright, Miss Muriel Matters. Sydney: Harper Collins, 2017, 37.

16 Wainwright, 38.

17 Southern Sphere, 1 July 1910, 12.

18 Sydney Morning Herald, 15 October 1898, 10.

19 Docker, Nervous Nineties, xxvii.

20 Quiz, 6 December 1900, 19.

21 quoted in Helen M. Van Der Poorten, ‘Rignall, George Richard (1839–1912)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rignall-george-richard-4478/text7311, published first in hardcopy 1976, accessed online 1 November 2017.

22 Quiz, 30 May 1901, 8.

23 Jo Sweatman, ‘When Australian Art was in its sturdy youth’, Argus, 5 April 1941, 4.

24 Dora Meeson Coates, George Coates: His Life and Work. London: Temple Press, 1937, 1.

25 Scott, Myra. ‘The Art of George James Coates (1869–1930) and Dora Meeson Coates (1869–1955).’ MA thesis, University of Melbourne, 1992, 40.

26 Scott, The Art of, 23. John Meeson’s controlling nature was presumably not helped by the death of the youngest of his four girls, Gertie, in 1890.

27 Meeson Coates, George Coates, 8.

28 Sydney Morning Herald, 5 September 1895, 4.

29 Sydney Morning Herald, 21 December 1895, 9; Sunbury News, 15 February 1896, 1.

30 Table Talk, 11 October 1895, 6.

31 Argus, 19 December 1895, 3

32 Australian Town and Country Journal, 21 December 1895, 39.

33 Table Talk, 25 December 1896, 16.

34 Meeson Coates, George Coates, 8.

35 Dora Montefiore, ‘L’Inspiratrice’, Le Journal Des Femmes, November 1892.

36 Dora Montefiore, From a Victorian, 5.

37 Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story. London: Everleigh Nash, 1914, 12.

38 Millicent Garrett Fawcett, What I Remember. London: Fisher Unwin, 1924, 192.

39 Dora Montefiore, From a Victorian, 40.

40 Brake, Laurel; Demoor, Marysa, eds. (2009), ‘Shafts (1892–1899)’, Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism, Academia Press, 568.

41 Dora Montefiore, Shafts, vol. 4, issue 1, 1896, 6.

42 Dora Montefiore, From a Victorian, 7.

43 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage. History of Woman Suffrage. Rochester, NY: Charles Mann, 1887, 15.

44 Dora Montefiore, ‘Shall Women Refuse Their Taxes?’, The Woman’s Signal, 17 June 1897, 383.

45 Dora Montefiore, From a Victorian, 39.

46 Britain’s military endeavours were supported by its Imperial allies: the Australian colonies, Canada, India and New Zealand. Historian Henry Reynolds argues that the Boer War was ‘as much a watershed for the Australian colonies as Federation’. The war, coming as it did in 1899, while the Australian people were still determining what a federal constitution would look like, raised several pertinent questions: ‘How independent were the five colonies that had their own parliaments? Did they have any capacity to develop relations with foreign powers?…Was there an obligation to provide assistance to the mother country?’ Federation, argues Reynolds, would not change the situation: ‘The new Commonwealth had no greater autonomy than the individual colonies had been able to exercise…it remained shackled to the Colonial Office’. Henry Reynolds, Unnecessary Wars, Sydney: NewSouth, 2016, 38–9.

47 Fawcett, A Short History, 58. Certainly, the Boer War stimulated imperial loyalties: 16,000 men from the Australian colonies signed up. Henry Reynolds suggests that the Boer War may even have been a British strategy for shoring up imperial unity given various signs of dissent in the late nineteenth century, including demands for self-government in South Africa, and increased nationalism in Australia and New Zealand. He calls it ‘martial grooming’. Reynolds, Unnecessary Wars, 197.

48 ‘Catalogue of Blunders’, Review of Reviews, 20 October 1903.

CHAPTER 10: A SPLENDID OBJECT LESSON

1 International Women’s Conference, Age, 11 December 1901, 8.

2 Sydney Mail and NSW Advertiser, 11 January 1902, 99.

3 Tocsin, 17 July 1902, 4.

4 Vida Goldstein, Papers.

5 Vida Goldstein Fawcett Library AJCP 2309.

6 For Roosevelt ‘gripping my hand in a vice’ see Vida Goldstein Papers. The emphasis is Goldstein’s.

7 Boston Woman’s Journal, 15 February, 1902.

8 Woman’s Sphere, 10 April 1902, 164.

9 Woman’s Sphere, 10 April 1902, 164.

10 Select Committee on Woman Suffrage, US Senate, 18 February 1902.

11 See, for example, Washington Post, 16 February 1902; New York Times, 2 March 1902.

12 Vida Goldstein, ‘The Australian Woman in Politics’, Review of Reviews, 20 January 1904, 47–50.

13 Vida Goldstein, ‘Woman Suffrage in Australia’ (1912), Papers.

14 New Zealand won the right to vote in national elections in 1893, but not eligibility to sit in parliament. Finland was the second country to legislate for both women’s suffrage and eligibility, in 1906.

15 Vida Goldstein, ‘Should Women Enter Parliament?’ in Review of Reviews, 20 August 1908, 135–136, quotation on 136.

16 Vida Goldstein, ‘The Australian Woman in Politics’, 47. Review of Reviews was an international conduit for reform issues, with editions published in London, America and Melbourne.

17 Review of Reviews, 1 March 1902.

18 Commercial Tribune, 20 June 1902.

19 Vida Goldstein, Papers.

20 Vida Goldstein, Papers.

21 Vida Goldstein, Papers.

22 Vida Goldstein, Papers.

23 Women’s Political Association, ‘The Life and Work of Miss Vida Goldstein’(n.d), State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection, MS 9594.

24 Vida Goldstein, Papers. Vida was known for her wit and good-natured ribbing of opponents, what was referred to as ‘taking her followers out of winding’. Leslie Henderson, biographical notes, State Library Of Victoria Australian Manuscripts Collection, MS 7930, Box 332/4.

25 Queenslander, 12 July 1902, 78.

26 Daily Telegraph, 20 August 1902, 9.

27 Table Talk, 28 August 1902, 3.

28 Table Talk, 30 October 1902, 6.

29 Bendigo Adverstiser, 1 September 1902, 5.

30 Vida Goldstein, Papers

31 Vida Goldstein, Papers.

32 Age, 29 July 1902, 8.

33 Woman’s Sphere, 10 October 1902, 218.

34 Stanton et al, History of Woman Suffrage. Inscriptions appear in volumes 1, 2 and 3. State Library of Victoria Rare Books Collection.

CHAPTER 11: THE QUESTION OF HOW WHITE

1 Daily Telegraph, 20 August 1902, 9.

2 The Dawn, 1 September 1901, 7.

3 All quotes from National Archives of Australia A6/1901/354.

4 Western Mail, 19 April 1902, 44.

5 William Guthrie Spence, Australia’s Awakening: Thirty Years in the Life of an Australian Agitator. Melbourne: The Workers’ Trustees, 1909, 376.

6 Review of Reviews, September 1911, xiii.

7 Gwenda Tavan, The Long Slow Death of White Australia. Melbourne: Scribe, 2005, 9.

8 Florence Gay, In Praise of Australia: An Anthology in Prose and Verse. London: Constable, 1912, 167.

9 Deakin, Federated Australia, 24 September 1901, 77. Alfred Deakin was, in fact, the anonymous Australian correspondent for the London Morning Post, even during his prime ministership.

10 Judith Brett, The Enigmatic Mr Deakin. Melbourne: Text, 2017, 290.

11 Judith Brett, The Enigmatic Mr Deakin, 342, 360.

12 Spence, Australia’s Awakening, 381.

13 There was no mention of Australian ‘citizenship’ in the Commonwealth constitution. Australians were all technically designated as ‘British subjects’ until 26 January 1949. I am therefore using the term in its current colloquial (rather than strictly legalistic) sense. For a discussion of the emergence of modern citizenship and women’s relationship to it, see Helen Irving, Citizenship, Alienage and the Modern Constitutional State: A Gendered History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. For a discussion of women, the constitution and representative democracy see Deborah Cass and Kim Rubenstein, ‘Representation/s of Women in the Australian Constitutional System’, Adelaide Law Review, vol. 17, 1995, 3–48.

14 Deakin, Federated Australia, 24 September 1901, 77.

15 Western Mail, 19 April 1902, 44.

16 Kalgoorlie Miner, 8 May 1902, 4.

17 Historian Judith Smart has contextualised this contest within the modernisation process of the late nineteenth-century, a response to forces including industrialisation, urbanisation and the disintegration of traditional communities. Increased mobility, coupled with a disruption in family and community identities, required the search for a new basis of unity and order, new means of belonging and affect. ‘The preoccupation with defining appropriate criteria for citizenship’, Smart argues, was a key component in both the women’s suffrage movement and federation-era nation-building. Judith Smart, ‘Modernity and Mother-Heartedness’, 51.

18 The Franchise Act was one of the few pieces of major legislation to be introduced into the Senate before the House of Representatives.

19 NAA A2863/1902/8.

20 NAA A1559/1902/8. Section 44 of the constitution stipulated a range of other exclusions for who could be elected to Parliament: those with an allegiance to a foreign power (dual nationals) or insolvents. Such people were not ineligible to vote.

21 NAA A2863/1902/8. The inclusion of Maoris was intended to act as an incentive to New Zealand to join the Commonwealth, as had been mooted since 1891. As O’Connor stated in debate, we hope that the day will come when New Zealand will be a member of the Federation. Any New Zealand government would want Maoris on an equal footing. The provision was granted on the assumption that, as Senator Styles put it, There is no fear of Maoris coming to Australia in any number, but if the Asians should get a foothold here they would soon swamp us. Hansard, Senate, 29 May 1902, 13009.

22 Hansard, Senate, 10 April 1902.

23 Deakin, Federated Australia, 8 October 1901, 28.

24 Hansard, Senate, 10 April 1902.

25 Hansard, Senate, 29 May 1902.

26 Hansard, Senate, 29 May 1902.

27 Hansard, Senate, 10 April 1902.

28 Hansard, House of Representatives, 24 April 1902.

29 Hansard, Senate, 29 May 1902.

30 Kalgoorlie Miner, 8 May 1902, 4.

31 For a discussion of the effects of this historical turning point, see Pat Stretton and Christine Finnimore, ‘Black Fellow Citizens: Aborigines and the Commonwealth Franchise’, Australian Historical Studies, 25:101, 1993, 521–35; Murray Goot, ‘The Aboriginal Franchise and Its Consequences’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 52:4, 2006, 517–61.

CHAPTER 12: THE WORLD FAIRLY STOOD AGHAST

1 H.G. Turner, The First Decade of the Australian Commonwealth: A Chronicle of Contemporary Politics, 1901–1910. Melbourne: Mason, Firth and McCutcheon, 1911, 24.

2 Pember Reeves, State Experiments, 103.

3 ‘The Working of Women’s Suffrage in New Zealand and South Australia’, Speeches by Hon WP Reeves and Hon JA Cockburn, 1897, The Women’s Library, PC/06/396–11/35

4 Edith Palliser, ‘The International Movement for Women’s Suffrage.’ In The Case for Women’s Suffrage, edited by Brougham Villiers, London: T.F. Unwin, 1907, 138.

5 Woman’s Journal, 3 May 1902, 138.

6 Bluegrass Blade, from the Commercial Tribune, 20 June 1902.

7 Stanton, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 29.

8 Clarence H. Northcott, Australian Social Development. New York: Columbia University Press, 1918, 32.

9 Northcott, Australian Social Development, 204.

10 Zimmern, Women’s Suffrage, 160.

11 Zimmern, Australian Social Development, 170.

12 Review of Reviews, 20 October 1903.

13 Ackermann, What Women Did, 21.

14 Review of Reviews, 20 July 1903.

15 Percy Rowland, ‘The Beginnings of an Australian National Character.’ Nineteenth Century 52, no. 307 (1902), 403.

16 Rowland, ‘The Beginnings’, 401.

17 Rowlands, ‘The Beginnings’, 411.

18 Goldstein, The Political Woman in Australia, 105.

CHAPTER 13: THE MODERN EVE

1 quoted in Judith Allen, Rose Scott, 118.

2 Bomford, That Dangerous, 29.

3 Woman’s Sphere, 10 November 1903, 367.

4 Brisbane Week, 27 November 1903, 24; Great Southern Advocate, 26 November 1903, 5; North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times, 14 October 1903, 2. There were hundreds of reports of Vida’s election speeches published nationally. This vignette is an amalgam of the three references here cited. Vida spoke in so many venues she was known to repeat her speeches.

5 Vida Goldstein, ‘The Australian Woman in Politics’, Review of Reviews, 20 January 1904.

6 Vida Goldstein, ‘The Australian Woman’.

7 Vida Goldstein, ‘Should Women Enter Parliament?’ Review of Reviews, 20 August 1903.

8 Woman’s Sphere, 10 August 1903, 334.

9 Compulsory voting was introduced in Australia in 1924.

10 Adelaide Register, 23 September 1903, 4.

11 Great Southern Advocate, 8 October, 1903, 3.

12 C.J. Martin, ‘What Women are Doing in Australia’, Womanhood: the magazine of woman’s progress and interests, political, legal, social, and intellectual, and of health and beauty culture, vol. 10 no. 58, 1903, 259.

13 Richard Seddon, 7 August 1902, The Women’s Library, PC/06/396–11/35

14 Cockburn, ‘The Working of Woman Suffrage’.

15 Woman’s Sphere, 10 August 1903, 334.

16 Vida Goldstein, ‘The Political Woman in Australia.’ Nineteenth Century 56, no. 329 (1904), 106.

17 Jessie Ackermann, What Women Have Done, 8.

18 Woman’s Sphere, 10 August 1903, 334.

19 Argus, 8 August 1903, 9.

20 Goldstein, The Political Woman in Australia, 105.

21 Some of those in Vida’s own camp feared for her personal wellbeing. Author Stella Miles Franklin, a close friend of Vida’s, wrote to Rose Scott fretting that she knew a man who had met Vida and confided that ‘she was absolutely repellent—metallic and repulsive’. I do wish she would melt more, don’t you?, Franklin asked Scott. Nonsense, Scott countered. There is nothing to melt. There is no reserve force of love or self-sacrifice as one sees in some people. Quoted in Allen, Rose Scott, 200.

22 quoted in Woman’s Sphere, 10 September 1903, 344. The Woman’s Sphere compiled ‘various views’ of Vida’s candidacy from news outlets around the country.

23 quoted in Woman’s Sphere, 10 September 1903, 344.

24 ‘Petticoats in Parliament’, Review of Reviews, 20 August 1903.

25 Argus, 14 October 1903, 6.

26 Argus, 14 October 1903, 6; Young Chronicle, 21 November 1903; Brisbane Telegraph, 31 October 1903, 13.

27 Telegraph, 31 October 1903, 13

28 Kate Laing, White Australia Nettle, 225.

29 Great Southern Advocate, 26 November 1903, 5.

30 Great Southern Advocate, 8 October 1903, 3.

31 For further reading on this topic see for example, Marilyn Lake, ‘Women and Whiteness.’ Australian Historical Studies 32, no. 117 (2001): 228–342.

32 Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 5 December 1903, 7. This article, like many, described Vida’s appearance at her election rallies. Unlike others, it noted the gendered hypocrisy, remarking that no one thinks of a male politician’s dress…but a lady politician is a very different person.

33 Young Chronicle, 21 November 1903.

34 Benalla Standard, 1 December, 1903, 2.

CHAPTER 14: SHE LOVED POLITICS

1 The studio was in Margaret Street in Sydney’s CBD, nestled beside the Scots Church, opposite Wynyard Park. The position couldn’t be more prominent or central.

2 The Dawn, 1 October 1903, 28.

3 Daily Telegraph, 20 August 1902, 5.

4 Martel, The Woman’s Vote, 2.

5 Nellie Martel, ‘Women’s Votes in New Zealand and Australia.’ In The Case for Women’s Suffrage, edited by Brougham Villiers, London: T.H. Unwin, 1907, 146.

6 These exact words belong to Josephine Butler, in a plea to NZ women to use their votes to stop the reintroduction of the Contagious Diseases Act which were an insult to womanhood. State Library of Victoria, AJCP, M2308.

7 The Dawn, 1 August 1903, 6.

8 Truth, 22 November 1903, 8.

9 Boulder Evening Star, 2 October 1903, 3.

10 Daily Telegraph, 31 October 1903, 11.

11 Newsletter: an Australian Paper for Australian People, 21 November 1903, 9.

12 Macleay, Argus, 12 December 1903, 12.

13 Watchman, 12 December 1903, 4.

14 Watchman, 12 December 1903, 4.

15 Watchman, 21 November 1903, 5.

16 Daily Telegraph, 21 November 1903, 10.

17 Truth, 22 November 1903, 2.

18 Balmain Observer, 21 November 1903, 3.

19 Sydney Morning Herald, 2 September 1903, 12.

20 Newcastle Morning Herald, 28 November 1903, 5.

21 The Dawn, 1 December 1903, 28.

22 Truth 29 November 1903, 6.

CHAPTER 15: THE GREATEST DAY THAT EVER DAWNED

1 The Dawn, 1 January 1904, 5.

2 Goldstein, ‘The Australian Woman’.

3 Review of Reviews, 20 June 1903.

4 Lake, ‘State Socialism’, 64.

5 Cockburn, ‘The Working of Woman Suffrage’.

6 quoted in Brett, Enigmatic Mr Deakin, 290.

7 Lady Julia Holder. ‘Equal Suffrage in Australia.’ In Congressional Publications on Woman Suffrage: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1904.

8 quoted in Lake, ‘State Socialism’, 63.

9 Tom Mann, ‘The Political and Industrial Situation in Australia.’ Nineteenth Century 56, no. 331 (September 1904), 479.

10 Tom Mann, ‘Political and Industrial’, 491.

11 Dora Montefiore, ‘Women Voters in Australia.’ New Age, 22 September 1904, 827.

12 Montefiore, ‘Women Voters’, 602.

13 Brougham Villiers, The Case for Women’s Suffrage, 9.

14 Brougham Villiers, The Case for Women’s Suffrage, 21.

15 The Dawn, 1 January 1904, 5.

16 Goldstein, ‘The Political Woman’, 110.

CHAPTER 16: THE FATEFUL 12TH MAY

1 Daily Telegraph, 13 May 1905, 10. There were 670 seats in the House of Commons at this time.

2 Montefiore, From a Victorian, 43.

3 Pankhurst, My Own Story, 42.

4 Broughton Villiers, 21.

5 Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866–1928, London: UCL Press, 1999, 198.

6 Illustrated London News, 20 May 1905, 724.

7 Daily News, 13 May 1905, 8.

8 Daily News, 13 May 1905, 8.

9 Daily News, 17 May 1905, 5.

10 Standard, 13 May 1905, 7.

11 Daily News, 13 May 1905, 8.

12 Daily News, 13 May 1905, 6.

13 Daily News, 13 May 1905, 8.

14 The Dawn, 1 July 1905, 7. For the text of the remarkable declaration of no confidence, which Keir Hardie tabled in the House of Commons on 19 May, see London Evening Standard, 20 May 1905, 4. See also the Morning Post, 20 May 1905, 5, which noted the considerable merriment that was created by the wording of the petition. The petition is the only aspect of the women’s actions on the fateful 12th that was reported.

15 Truth, 20 March 1904, 5.

16 Truth, 20 March 1904, 5.

17 Freeman’s Journal, 3 June 1905, 29.

18 Truth, 21 August 1904, 6.

19 Evening News, 7 October 1904, 4.

20 Evening News, 7 October 1904, 4.

21 Richmond River Herald, 14 October 1904, 5.

22 Newsletter: an Australian Paper for Australian People, 15 October 1904, 9.

23 in Zimmern, Women’s Suffrage, 158.

24 Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement, 727.

25 Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account. London: Longmans, 1931, 62.

26 Sunday Sun, 16 April 1905, 4.

27 Martel, The Women’s Vote, 3, 7.

28 Daily News, 3 April 1905, 8.

29 Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the Vote. London: Hutchinson, 1959, 47.

30 E. Pankhurst, My Story, 42.

31 S. Pankhurst, The Suffragette, 14.

32 S. Pankhurst, The Suffragette, 183.

33 quoted in Elizabth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement, 198.

34 Sylvia Pankhurst, The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst: The Suffragette Struggle for Women’s Citizenship. London: T. Werner Laurie Ltd, 1935. 51.

35 The Dawn, 1 June 1905, 5.

36 C. Pankhurst, Unshackled, 62.

37 Ann Nugent, Nellie Alma Martel, 144.

38 E. Pankhurst, My Story, 56.

39 Daily News, 15 May 1905, 5.

CHAPTER 17: NO MORE PEACE

1 Northam Adverstiser, 22 July 1905, 1.

2 Critic, 6 July 1904, 13.

3 Wainwright, Miss Muriel Matters, 62.

4 The Vote, 19 February 1910, 196.

5 Angela Woollacott, To Try Her Fortune in London: Australian Women, Colonialism, and Modernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, 157.

6 My Brilliant Career, the story of Sybylla Melvyn, a headstrong bush girl determined to forge an unconventional female path, was published in 1901.

7 Perth Daily News, 9 November 1905, 10.

8 Wainwright puts Muriel’s good fortune down to a combination of these three factors. Wainwright, Miss Muriel Matters, 69.

9 Boulder Evening Star, 8 November 1906, 3.

10 Louise Mack, The Romance of a Woman at Thirty. London: Alston Rivers, 1911, 132.

11 Advertiser, 23 January 1906, 6.

12 Critic, 24 January 1906, 20.

13 Muriel Matters, ‘My Impressions as an Agitator’, in Mrs Leonard Matters, Australasians Who Count in London and Who Counts in Western Australia. London: Jas. Truscott, 1913, 161–2.

14 Muriel Matters, interview in The Southern Sphere, 1 July 1910, 12.

15 Weekly Times, 25 June 1910, 10.

16 Weekly Times, 25 June 1910, 10.

17 Matters, My Impressions, 161–2.

18 Weekly Times, 25 June 1910, 10.

19 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World. London: Victor Gollancz, 1938, 253.

20 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 45.

21 Manchester Guardian, 16 October 1905, 10.

22 Manchester Guardian, 16 October 1905, 10.

23 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 50.

24 Montefiore, Victorian to Modern, Marxists Internet Archive, transcription by Ted Crawford, np.

25 C. Pankhurst, Unshackled, 47.

26 Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Women’s Fight for the Vote. London: The Women’s Press, 1910, 13. Fred was born Frederick Lawrence. When he married socialist feminist Emmeline Pethick in 1901, the couple took the combined surname Pethick-Lawrence, becoming the Brangelinas of the Edwardian era.

27 The woman was Minnie Baldock. Dora Montefiore accused Sylvia Pankhurst of misrepresenting history by writing in The Suffragette that Annie Kenney lived with her when she first came to London. Dora insisted that Kenney arrived on Dora’s step, and Dora sent her to live with Baldock. Crawford, Women’s Suffrage Movement, 25.

28 Dora Montefiore, New Age, 24 December 1903, 827.

29 Dora Montefiore, New Age, 22 September 1904, 602.

30 Ackermann, What Women Have Done, 30.

31 F. Pethick-Lawrence, Women’s Fight, 70–84.

32 Martel, Women’s Votes in New Zealand and Australia, 153.

33 The Era, 24 March 1906, 15.

CHAPTER 18: THE SIEGE OF FORT MONTEFIORE

1 Jill Liddington, The Life and Times of a Respectable Rebel: Selina Cooper 1864–1946. London: Virago, 1984, 170.

2 Montefiore, Victorian to Modern, Marxists Internet Archive, np.

3 Washington Post, 25 May 1906, 6. The New York Times also covered the story under the headline ‘Calls Asquith Assassin: Suffragist Wants Windows Stoned’, 25 May 1906, 8.

4 Adelaide Register, 27 June 1906, 6.

5 Adelaide Register, 27 June 1906, 6.

6 New Age, quoted in WA Record, 8 October 1904, 5. Dora also argued that Australia needs population to develop its wealth and resources. Womanhood, vol. XII, no. 72, 1904, pvii.

7 Gawler Bunyip, 15 July 1904, 4.

8 Brisbane Telegraph, 18 July 1904, 5.

9 Gawler Bunyip, 15 July 1904, 4.

10 quoted in Christine Collette, ‘Socialism and Scandal: the sexual politics of the early Labour Movement’, History Workshop Journal, vol. 23, no. 1, 1 March 1987, 103.

11 Collette, ‘Socialism and Scandal’, 102. Nymphomania is the female equivalent.

12 Dora’s fear was not without foundation. George’s bid for the seat of Hammersmith at the general election was rejected by the ILP, and Dora was forced to resign as acting recording secretary of the International Women’s Congress of the SDF. Collette, ‘Socialism and Scandal’, 106. Furthermore, when Elizabeth Wolstenholme became pregnant, aged 40, to her lover, Ben Elmy, it was her feminist friends who urged the couple to marry ‘in order that the honour of the women’s movement not be besmirched’. Crawford, Women’s Suffrage Movement, 191.

13 quoted in Karen Hunt, ‘Journeying through Suffrage: The Politics of Dora Montefiore.’ In The Suffrage Reader: Charting Direction In British Suffrage History, edited by Clare Eustance, Ryan, Joan and Ugolini, Laura. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 2000, 172.

14 Dora Montefiore, ‘Taxation without Representation Is Tyranny.’ New Age, 22 June 1905, 394.

15 West London Observer, 22 December 1905, 8.

16 Observer, 27 May 1906, 6.

17 Montefiore, Victorian to Modern, 81.

18 Montefiore, Victorian to Modern, 78.

19 Manchester Guardian, 28 May 1906, 8.

20 Adelaide Advertiser, 26 June 1906, 4.

21 Adelaide Advertiser, 26 June 1906, 4.

22 Gippsland Gazette, 31 July 1906, 3.

23 Montefiore, Victorian to Modern, 75.

24 Gippsland Gazette, 31 July 1906, 3.

25 Scrutineer and Berrima District Press, 5 September 1906, 5.

26 S. Pankhurst, The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst, 184.

27 Observer, 1 July 1906 5.

28 Montefiore, Victorian to Modern, 77.

29 Fawcett, What I Remember, 181.

30 Diane Atkinson, The Suffragettes in Pictures. London: Museum of London, 1996, 36.

31 Adelaide Register, 25 October 1906, 5.

32 Montefiore, Victorian to Modern, 92.

33 Brisbane Telegraph, 25 October 1906, 4.

34 Montefiore, Victorian to Modern, 92.

35 Adelaide Register, 26 October 1906, 5.

36 Evening Star, 25 October 1906, 3; Adelaide Register, 26 October 1906, 5.

37 Teresa Billington-Greig, The Militant Suffrage Movement: Emancipation in a Hurry. London: Frank Palmer, 1911, 68.

38 Darling Downs Gazette, 26 October 1906, 5.

39 Adelaide Register 2 November 1906, 5.

40 Adelaide Register, 26 October 1906, 5. Many Australian papers reported that it was Edith How-Martyn who, on being arrested, claimed to be an enfranchised Australian woman who had once polled 20,000 votes. It was clearly Nellie Martel.

41 Montefiore, Victorian to Modern, 95.

42 June Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography. London: Routledge, 2002, 88.

43 S. Pankhurst, Suffragette, 1931, 237.

44 quoted in Purves, Emmeline Pankhurst, 88.

45 Brisbane Telegraph, 3 November 1906, 4.

46 Truth, 4 November 1906, 9.

47 Clarence and Richmond Examiner, 22 September 1906, 5.

48 Hobart Mercury, 6 December 1906, 6.

49 Billington-Greig, Militant Suffrage, 68.

50 Billington-Greig, Militant Suffrage, 72.

CHAPTER 19: ELECTRIF Y THE HOUSE

1 Dora Meeson Coates, George Coates, 59–62.

2 Dora Meeson Coates, George Coates, 11–17.

3 Scott, The Art of, 22.

4 Dora Meeson Coates, George Coates, 26.

5 Scott, The Art of, 25.

6 Dora Meeson Coates, George Coates, 62.

7 Scott, The Art of, 36.

8 Scott, The Art of, 24.

9 Scott, The Art of, 25.

10 Carol Mills, ‘Expatriate Australian Black and White Artists: Ruby and Will Dyson and Their Circle in London.’ In Working papers in Australian Studies. London: Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, 1988, 6.

11 Dora Meeson Coates, George Coates, 43.

12 Crawford, Women’s Suffrage Movement, 257.

13 Crawford, Women’s Suffrage Movement, 358.

14 Scott, The Art of, 28.

15 Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign 1907–14. London: Chatto and Windus, 1987, 16.

16 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 16.

17 Diane Atkinson, Purple, White and Green, 41.

18 Villiers, 11.

19 Kenney, vii.

20 Scott, The Art of, 27.

21 Martel, ‘Women’s Vote in Australia’, 10.

22 Adelaide Observer, 23 March 1907, 45.

23 Another Australian rank and file member of the WSPU, Miss Constance Clyde, a journalist, was imprisoned after the Opening of Parliament demonstration. Molong Argus, 5 April 1907, 1.

24 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 74.

25 quoted in Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 78.

26 The Graphic, Supplement, 16 February 1907, 3, reproduced in Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 77.

27 Adelaide Observer, 23 March 1907, 45.

CHAPTER 20 : THE SOCIAL LABOR ATORY

1 Ex parte H.V. McKay (1907) is commonly known as the Harvester Judgment.

2 Deakin, Federated Australia, 216.

3 Vida may also have drawn on the work of Maud Pember Reeves, wife of William Pember Reeves. She had been active in the New Zealand suffrage movement. The couple moved from New Zealand to London when William was appointed agent-general in 1896. Maud was a Fabian and a feminist, credited with having persuaded the London Fabians (including Bertrand Russell and H.G. Wells) to support women’s suffrage. Maud had studied the effects of poverty on households and infant mortality rates. Her findings would be published in an influential pamphlet, Round About a Pound a Week, in 1913. Maud maintained that, coming from New Zealand, socialism was just glorified common sense. H.G. Wells maintained that Maud’s absorption in the suffrage movement was a form of sublimation due to her sexual frustration in her marriage. Ruth Fry, Maud and Amber: A New Zealand Mother and Daughter and the Women’s Cause, 1865–1981. Canterbury: Canterbury University Press, 1992, 74, 39.

4 ‘The Women’s Franchise in Australia’, The New Witness, n.d, University of Manchester archives, IWSA 3/2.

5 Ackermann, Australia From a Woman’s Point of View, 1913, 2.

6 Martel, Woman’s Vote, 3.

7 Zimmern, Women’s Suffrage, 168.

8 Pember Reeves, Effect of Woman Suffrage, 4.

9 People’s Suffrage Federation leaflet no. 21, n.d. The Women’s Library, LSE, PC/06/396–11/35.

10 Ackermann in fact held that Australia was the least likely place where women could remedy the centuries-old maladies of law and custom, given the tone of politics and the calibre of politicians. In Australia, she wrote, party spirit is so fierce and bitter and that any man was welcome to a seat if he is glib of tongue and tinged with the microbe of words or the germ of speech. Ackermann, Australia From a Woman’s Point of View, 30.

11 quoted in Keating, An Utter Absence, 467.

12 Argus, 30 May 1908, 20.

13 Melbourne Leader, 11 January 1908, 46.

14 Melbourne Leader, 11 January 1908, 46.

15 Zimmern, Women’s Suffrage, 168.

16 Vida Goldstein, ‘Woman Suffrage’.

17 Argus, 26 October 1907, 20.

18 Zimmern, Women’s Suffrage, 168.

19 Goldstein, ‘Woman Suffrage’, np.

20 Goldstein, ‘Woman Suffrage’, np.

21 Teresa Billington married Frederick Greig in February 1907.

22 Billington-Greig, Militant Suffrage, 1.

23 Billington-Greig, Militant Suffrage, 6–27.

24 Brougham Villiers, The Case for, 12.

CHAPTER 21: TRUST THE WOMEN

1 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, xii.

2 Tickner makes the important point that the art of the suffrage movement was ‘not a footnote or an illustration to the ‘real’ political history going on elsewhere, but an integral part of the fabric of social conflict with its own contradictions and ironies and its own power to shape thought, focus debates and stimulate action.’ Tickner, Spectacle of Women, ix.

3 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 52.

4 Ethel Snowden, The Feminist Movement. London: Collins, 1913, 13.

5 Smart, ‘Modernity and mother-heartedness’, 54–6.

6 Bramwell Booth, Mrs. Mothers of the Empire and Other Addresses. London: Salvation Army Book Department, 1914, 1.

7 For more on the missionary work of organisations like the WCTU, the Salvation Army, see Smart, ‘Modernity and mother-heartedness’, 52.

8 Oliver Banks. Becoming a Feminist: The Social Origins of First Wave Feminism. London: Wheatsheaf Books, 1986, 26. The exception was where feminist daughters had feminist mothers, as in the example of the Pankhursts. First wave feminists were also more likely to have close and warm relationships with fathers who encouraged their daughters to be unconventional or break the mould, taking particular interest in their education and treating them equally with sons. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson’s mother, for example, begged her with tears and entreaties not to train as a doctor. Banks, 28.

9 Cicely Hamilton; with sketches by M. Lowndes, D. Meeson Coates, C. Hedley Charlton, Beware! A Warning to Suffragists. London: Artists Suffrage League, 1909.

10 Meeson Coates, George Coates, 40.

11 Meeson Coates, George Coates, 43.

12 Doughty, Lady Eugenia. The Cheerful Way. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1912.

13 Votes for Women, 16 April 1908, cxc.

14 Anon, ‘Not prophecy but history’, 1908?

15 Justice, 23 July 1901, 7.

16 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 58.

17 This lovely sentiment belongs to Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 60.

18 quoted in Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 60.

19 quoted in Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 62.

20 Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 63.

21 Faringdon Advertiser, Saturday 20 June, 1908, 2.

22 Fawcett, What I Remember, 191.

23 Woman Worker, 19 June 1908, 66.

24 Morning Post, 15 June 1908, 7.

25 source unidentified June 14 1908, clipping files, TWL 10/01.

26 Lancashire Daily, 15 June 1908, 3.

27 see for example Salisbury Times, 19 June 1908, 3.

28 source unidentified, clipping files, TWL 10/01.

29 Telegraph, nd, clipping files, TWL 10/01.

30 clipping files, TWL 10/01.

31 John Playford, ‘Cockburn, Sir John Alexander (1850–1929)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cockburn-sir-johnalexander-5701/text9637, published first in hardcopy 1981, accessed online 1 December 2017.

32 Woman Worker, 19 June 1908, 66.

33 Women’s Franchise, vol. II no. 8, 1908, 82.

CHAPTER 22: FORCE MAJEURE

1 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 111.

2 Shrewsbury Chronicle, 19 June 1908, 9.

3 The Times, 20 June 1908, 5.

4 The Times, 20 June 1908, 5.

5 S. Pankhurst, The Life of, 241.

6 Snowden, Woman Socialist, 258.

7 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 58.

8 Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 99.

9 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 58.

10 Annie Kenney, Memories of a Militant. London: Edward Arnold, 1924, 138.

11 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 52.

12 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 66.

13 S. Pankhurst, The Life of, 72.

14 Kalgoorlie Miner, 21 January 1908, 5.

15 S. Pankhurst, The Life of, 185–187.

16 TWL PC/08.

17 TWL PC/08.

18 letter from Nellie Martel to Mary Ann Rawle, 1909, TWL 7/MAR/04/09.

19 Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, cited in E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 111.

20 S. Pankhurst, The Suffragette, 245; unidentified clipping files, TWL 10/01.

21 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 111.

22 S. Pankhurst, The Suffragette, 246.

23 ‘Half a million in Hyde Park’, unidentified clipping files, TWL 10/01.

24 The phrase is Nellie’s. Votes for Women, no. 14, 1908, 236.

25 No evidence exists of the contents of Nellie Martel’s speech at the Hyde Park demonstration. These words are taken from reports of a speech she delivered at an open air meeting in Leicester in September 1907. Women’s Franchise, 19 September 1907, 132 and in a report published in Women’s Franchise summing up the Colne Valley by-election campaign. Women’s Franchise, no. 5, 1907, 65 and her address to north-west Manchester in April 1908, reported in full in the Manchester Guardian and reprinted in Votes for Women, 16 April 1908, cxc; ‘Women’s Suffrage in Australia’, Manchester Guardian, 3 September 1908, 12.

26 ‘Votes for Women’, Daily Mirror, nd, clipping files, TWL 10/01. The statement is in relation to Mrs Pankhurst’s platform but the circumstance was general.

27 ‘Half a Million in Hyde Park’, source unidentified, nd, clipping files, TWL 10/01.

28 Daily Mail, quoted in Votes for Women, 25 June 1908, 261.

29 ‘Votes for Women’, Daily Mirror, nd, clipping files, TWL 10/01.

30 Daily Mail, quoted in Votes for Women, 25 June 1908, 261.

31 ‘Votes for Women’, Daily Mirror, nd, clippings files, TWL 10/01.

CHAPTER 23: A GENEROUS FEELING OF SOLIDARITY

1 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 115.

2 S. Pankhurst, The Suffragette, 249–54.

3 quoted in Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 104.

4 Wainwright, Miss Muriel Matters, 104.

5 quoted in Wainwright, Miss Muriel Matters, 93.

6 Mrs Leonard Matters, Australians Who Count, 76.

7 Mrs Leonard Matters, Australians Who Count, 76.

8 Rischbieth Papers 2004/1/6.

9 Matters, ‘My Impressions’, 162.

10 Mrs Leonard Matters, Australians Who Count, 76.

11 Marion Holmes, Concerning MM, The Vote 19/2/1910.

12 Later that month the Liberal Party found another seat for Churchill to contest in a by-election. Despite WFL and WSPU interference, he won the seat and returned to cabinet.

13 quoted in Wainwright, Miss Muriel Matters, 102.

14 Marion Holmes, ‘Concerning Muriel Matters’, The Vote, 19 February 1910, 196.

15 Wainwright, Miss Muriel Matters, 112.

16 Matters, ‘My Impressions’, 163.

17 Women’s Franchise, vol. II, no. 5, 1908, 56.

18 Marion Holmes, ‘Concerning Muriel Matters’, The Vote, 19 February 1910, 196.

19 Surrey Mirror, 19 May 1908, 4.

20 ‘Australian Women In Politics: An Interview with Miss Muriel Matters’, British-Australasian, 9 February 1911, 9.

21 Women’s Franchise, 4 September 1908, 583.

22 Women’s Franchise, 4 September 1908, 583.

23 quoted in Crawford, Women’s Suffrage Movement, 421.

24 Montefiore, Victorian to Modern, Marxist Archive Online, np.

25 http://mentalfloss.com/article/57988/11-unbelievable-moments-cocaines-early-medical-history

26 Crawford, Women’s Suffrage Movement, 422.

27 Dora Montefiore, ‘A Bundle of Fallacies.’ The Social Democrat 5, no. 2 (15 February 1901), 48–9.

28 Montefiore, Victorian to Modern, Marxist Archive Online, np.

29 quoted in Hunt, ‘Journeying’, 171.

30 There is some evidence that Dora went as a delegate of the WFL, but no evidence that she was ever a member of the WFL. It was not uncommon for women to be members of multiple suffrage associations. Crawford, Women’s Suffrage Movement, 421.

31 Following the political unrest in Russia in 1905, and an associated Finnish general strike in 1906, Finland demanded democratic reform of its own parliament and constitution. As women had been on the front lines of the general strike, their claim to universal suffrage was considered valid and approved by the Tsar. Finland became the first European nation to grant women the right to vote in 1906, also mandating the eligibility to stand for the unicameral parliament. Though this breakthrough was a triumph for the international women’s movement, it was not perceived to be a precedent for the non-European world. Under the arbitrary control of Russia, Finland’s success was seen as an inspiring yet ultimately unreliable example for democracies like Great Britain and America. Finland is old enough and has a creditable history, explained Carrie Chapman Catt, but its people are in a state of revolution; what the Czar has given, he may take away. Zimmern, Women’s Suffrage, 158.

32 They didn’t. The union of South Africa occurred on 31 May 1901, but white South African women didn’t get the vote until 1930. South Africa’s first all-race elections were held in 1994. Regine Deutsch, The International Woman Suffrage Alliance: Its History from 1904 to 1929. Vida Goldstein Memorial Collection Commemorating Women’s Achievements in National Development. London 1929, 119.

33 Deutsch, International Woman Suffrage, 60–72.

34 Deutsch, International Woman Suffrage, 83.

CHAPTER 24 : CHAIN GANG

1 ‘Heat Wave Continues’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 30 September 1908, 6.

2 Coventry Evening Telegraph, 30 September 1908, 2.

3 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 118.

4 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 118.

5 quoted in Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 113.

6 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 126.

7 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 133.

8 Willesden Chronicle, 30 October 1908, 7.

9 quoted in Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 115.

10 S. Pankhurst, The Suffragette, 1911, 328.

11 quoted in Wainwright, Miss Muriel Matters, 155.

12 quoted in Crawford, Women’s Suffrage Movement, 392.

13 British-Australasian, 9 February 1911, 9.

14 quoted in Wainwright, Miss Muriel Matters, 157.

15 Rischbieth Papers 2004/3/392.

16 Hampshire Telegraph, 31 October 1908, 4.

17 Nottingham Evening Post, 29 October 1908, 3.

18 Grantham Journal, 31 October, 1908, 7.

19 S. Pankhurst, Life of, 294.

20 Billington-Greig, Militant Suffrage, 28.

CHAPTER 25: ROWDY AND REPELLENT

1 According to the unpublished research of Eileen Luscombe, the WFL minutes of 1958 note that Muriel later believed that Helen Fox was a police stooge. Luscombe believes, however, that Fox was the lover of a man who was wealthy and well connected in Fabian circles and she was therefore pulled from further suffragette activities in order to supress her name for fear of scandal to the family. Email correspondence with Eileen Luscombe 12 May 2018.

2 Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 29 October 1908, 6.

3 Gadfly, 28 October 1908, 15.

4 Western Mail, 7 November 1908, 39.

5 Age, 12 November 1908, 6.

6 Advocate, 5 December 1908, 13.

7 Age, 16 December 1908, 12.

8 Truth, 23 January 1909, 5.

9 Molong Argus, 5 April 1907, 1.

10 Observer, 25 January 1908, 24.

11 Table Talk, 23 January 1908, 10.

12 Table Talk, 30 January 1908, 26.

13 Register, 30 October 1908, 4.

14 Truth, 10 January 1909, 6. Perle blanc is face powder, made from ground pearls.

15 Votes for Women, September 1908, 447.

16 Ann Nugent, ‘Sister Suffragettes’, National Library of Australia News, February 2003, 7.

17 Manchester Guardian, 7 November 1908, 11.

18 Nugent, ‘Nellie Alma Martel’, 156.

19 Nugent, ‘Nellie Alma Martel’, 156.

20 Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 81. Purves’ biography of Pankhurst is not concerned with Nellie Martel. She uses this exchange between Robins and Pankhurst as evidence that Emmeline could be caring and thoughtful and not always the narcissist she is often portrayed as.

21 quoted in Nugent, ‘Nellie Alma Martel’, 156.

22 TWL 7/MAR/04/09.

23 Ethel Hill and Olga Shafer, Great Suffragists and Why: Modern Makers of History. London: H.J. Drane, 1909, 172.

24 For an account of Deakin’s strategy regarding the Great White Fleet, see Brett, Enigmatic Mr Deakin, 365–70.

25 International Woman Suffrage Alliance, Report of the Fourth Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, Amsterdam, 1908. Amsterdam: F. Van Rossen, 1908, 84.

26 Bomford, That Dangerous, 88.

27 International Woman Suffrage Alliance, Report of the Fourth Conference, 84.

28 Women’s Franchise, vol. II 28, 1909, 330.

29 Women’s Franchise, vol. II 28, 1909, 330.

30 ‘Miss Goldstein Joyful’, Progress, January 1909, 4.

CHAPTER 26: FIGHT AND FLIGHT

1 Weekly Times, 25 June 1901, quoted in Wainwright, Miss Muriel Matters, 196.

2 Colac Herald, 26 February 1909, 6.

3 Queensland Figaro, 11 February 1909, 15.

4 Northern Daily Telegraph, 17 February 1909, 2.

5 quoted in Wainwright, Miss Muriel Matters, 198.

6 The Times, 17 February 1909, 10.

7 Hull Daily Mail, 17 February 1909, 3.

8 The Observer, 21 February 1909, 6.

CHAPTER 27: THE ENV Y OF THE WORLD

1 British-Australasian, 23 March 1911, 22.

2 British-Australasian, 23 March 1911, 22.

3 Argus, 30 November 1909, 8.

4 Riverine Herald, 6 December 1909, 3.

5 Brisbane Telegraph, 15 January 1910, 11.

6 Worker, 10 February 1910, 7.

7 Goldstein, ‘The Political Woman in Australia’, 108.

8 Hamilton Spectator, 16 February 1910, 3.

9 The British-Australasian, 23 March 1911, 22.

10 Deakin, Federated Australia, 19 April 1910, 284.

11 Brett, Enigmatic Mr Deakin, 393.

12 Fisher papers NLA MS 2919, 9c, Box 5, folder 26.

13 David Day, Andrew Fisher: Prime Minister of Australia. Sydney: Fourth Estate, 2008, 192.

14 Fisher papers, MS 2919, 9c, Box 5, folder 25.

15 Fisher papers, MS 2919, 9c, Box 5, folder 25.

16 quoted in Day, Andrew Fisher, 190.

17 Spence, Australia’s Awakening, 496.

18 Spence, Australia’s Awakening, 625.

19 Spence, Australia’s Awakening, 16.

20 Spence, Australia’s Awakening, 16.

21 Spence, Australia’s Awakening, 625. Its secondary objective was The securing of the full results of their industry to all producers by the collective ownership of monopolies.

22 Spence, Australia’s Awakening, 582.

23 Spence, Australia’s Awakening, 595.

24 Star, 4 March, 1910, 4.

25 Melbourne Advocate, 5 March 1910, 24.

26 South Eastern Times, 6 May 1910, 3.

27 Vida disagreed with Deakin’s position on the Financial Agreement and laid out her reasoning against the constitutional change that would be required to administer it (there was also a referendum question on the issue to be posed at the ballot box on election day).

28 Australasian, 12 March 1910, 38.

29 Punch, 13 April 1910, 22.

30 Argus 13 April 1910, 4.

31 Age, 5 April 1910, 8.

32 Mt Alexander Mail, 24 March 1910, 2.

33 Kerang New Times, 25 March 1910, 5.

34 Evening Telegraph, 8 April 1910, 5.

35 Truth, 28 May 1910, 6.

36 David Day, Andrew Fisher, 191.

37 Votes for Women, 29 July 1910, 734.

38 Votes for Women 13 May 1910, 531.

39 Progress, June 1910, 3.

40 Woman’s Journal, 8 April 1911, 107.

41 The British-Australasian, 23 March 1911, 22.

42 Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, would claim this same achievement after she was rolled from office by an internal party revolt in June 2013. Australian, 29 June 2013, online.

43 Gympie Times and Mary River Mining Gazette, 16 April 1910, 2.

44 Numurkah Leader, 27 May 1910, 4.

45 Deakin, 8 March 1910, Federated Australia, 280.

46 Deakin, 19 April 1910, Federated Australia, 284.

47 Martel, Women’s Vote, 10.

CHAPTER 28: HOME COMING QUEEN

1 Crawford, Women’s Suffrage Movement, 179.

2 Deutsch, International Woman Suffrage, 15.

3 quoted in Wainwright, Miss Muriel Matters, 214.

4 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 166.

5 Matters, ‘Our Australian Tour’, The Vote, 1 October 1910, 267.

6 quoted in Wainwright , Miss Muriel Matters, 210.

7 Bendigo Independent, 26 August 1909, 7.

8 Newcastle Morning Herald, 6 December 1906, 3.

9 Matters, unpublished obituary of Violet Tillard, MMS.

10 Matters, ‘Our Australian Tour’, The Vote, 1 October 1910, 267.

11 Truth, 14 May 1910, 11.

12 Matters, ‘Our Australian Tour’, The Vote, 1 October 1910, 267.

13 West Australian, 11 May 1910, 9.

14 Perth Daily News, 1 April 1910, 10; Bendigo Independent, 26 Aug 1909, 7.

15 West Australian, 11 May 1910, 9.

16 Daily News, 14 May 1910, 5.

17 Daily News, 14 May 1910, 5.

18 Truth, 28 May 1910, 6.

19 Advertiser, 13 June 1910, 8.

20 Melbourne Leader, 11 June 1910, 45.

21 Advertiser, 13 June 1910, 8.

22 Maternal mortality rates worldwide did not begin to decrease until the 1930s. Sixty years later, in developed countries, the rates were one-fiftieth of what they had been earlier in the century. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/72/1/241s.full

23 Daily News, 20 May 1910, 5.

24 West Australian, 20 May 1910, 4.

25 Bunbury Herald, 24 May 1910, 3.

26 West Australian, 24 May 1910, 2.

27 Matters, ‘Our Australian Tour’, The Vote, 1 October 1910, 267.

28 Daily Herald, 4 June 1910, 5.

29 Western Mail, 28 May 1910, 40.

30 Western Mail, 28 May 1910, 40.

31 Adelaide Advertiser, 1 June 1910, 8.

32 Critic, 1 June 1910, 15.

33 Critic, 1 June 1910 ,14.

34 Evening Journal, 14 June 1910, 2; Chronicle, 18 June 1910, 54.

35 Evening Journal, 14 June 1910, 2.

36 Chronicle, 18 June 1910, 54. Catherine Helen Spence died on 3 April 1910, aged 85.

37 Billington-Greig, Militant Suffrage, 140.

38 Chronicle, 18 June 1910, 54.

39 Evening Journal, 14 June 1910, 2.

40 Evening Journal, 14 June 1910, 2.

41 Benalla Standard, 4 July 1910, 3.

42 The quote is Lady Lytton’s. June Purvis, Force feeding of Hunger Striking Suffragettes, https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/force-feeding-ofhunger-striking-suffragettes/93438.article

43 Benalla Standard, 4 July 1910, 3.

44 Age, 20 June 1910, 7.

45 Hobart Mercury, 5 September 1910, 3.

46 Matters, ‘Our Australian Tour,’ The Vote, 1 October 1910, 267.

47 Matters, The Christian Commonwealth, 21 December 1910.

48 Gippsland Times, 23 January 1911 2; Table Talk, 23 June 1919, 10.

49 Barrier Miner, 10 April 1901, 2.

50 West Australian, 20 June 1910, 5.

51 Weekly Times, 25 June 1910, 10.

52 Goldstein, Diary, 1908.

53 Benalla Standard, 5 July 1910, 3.

54 West Gippsland Gazette, 12 July 1910, 2.

55 Clarence and Richmond Examiner, 5 July 1910, 5.

56 Bathurst Times, 15 July 1910, 2; Worker, 21 July 1910, 3.

57 Worker, 21 July 1910, 3.

58 Worker, 21 July 1910, 3.

59 Argus, 23 July 1910, 16.

60 Argus, 26 July 1910, 8.

61 Hansard, House of Representatives, 22 July 1910, 683.

62 The Vote, 8 October 1910, 287. Muriel mentions the luncheon party in the published report of her Australian tour, but not the menu. This detail I have fabricated from other luncheon menus of a similar social ilk during this era.

63 Evening Star, 2 September 1910, 3.

64 Evening Star, 2 September 1910, 3.

65 Evening Star, 2 September 1910, 3.

66 Matters, ‘Our Australian Tour,’ The Vote, 1 October 1910, 267.

CHAPTER 29: THOUGH DISASTER WAS FREELY PROPHESIED

1 Turner, The First Decade, 308.

2 Deakin, Federated Australia, 284

3 Turner, The First Decade, 308.

4 The Vote, 21 January 1911, 157.

5 A. Frank Farrell, ‘Rae, Arthur Edward (1860–1943)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rae-arthur-edward-8148/text14237, published first in hardcopy 1988, accessed online 21 December 2017.

6 Hansard, Senate, 17 November 1910, 6300–14.

7 The Vote, 21 January 1911, 157.

8 Common Cause, 10 February 1910, republished in People’s Suffrage Federation leaflet no. 25, TWL @ LSE PC/06/396–11/35

9 Matters, Christian Commonwealth, 21 December 1910.

10 Matters, Christian Commonwealth, 21 December 1910.

11 Hansard, 22 November 1910.

12 Matters, Christian Commonwealth, 21 December 1910.

13 Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Women’s Suffrage: A Short History of a Great Movement. London: TC and EC Jack, 1912, 43.

14 IWSA, Report of Sixth Congress, President’s Address.

15 Sydney Morning Herald, 9 August 1911, 5.

16 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 166.

17 Yorkshire Observer, 12 November 1910. Derby Daily Telegraph, 12 November 1910, 2.

18 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 179.

19 S. Pankhurst, Life of, 97.

20 The description is taken from a published report about the violence on 18 November compiled from witness and victim statements. Quoted in Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 150.

21 Linklater, Andro. An Unhusbanded Life: Charlotte Despard, Suffragette, Socialist and Sinn Feiner. London: Hutchinson, 1980, 140.

22 Linklater, An Unhusbanded Life, 140.

23 quoted in Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 151.

24 Coventry Evening Telegraph, 18 November 1910, 3.

25 quoted in Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 151.

26 Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 154; Crawford, Women’s Suffrage Movement, 154. Mary Clarke, imprisoned for throwing a stone through a window, was released two days before Christmas. She could not last out the family meal, forsaking turkey for a lie down. When Emmeline went upstairs to check on her ailing sister, she found Mary unconscious, dying of a brain haemorrhage. Emmeline spent the night in bed with daughter Sylvia, clung together…stunned by our sorrow. Emmeline had lost her son, her mother and her sister within a year.

CHAPTER 30: THE WONDER YEAR

1 C. Pankhurst, Unshackled, 172.

2 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 18.

3 S. Pankhurst, The Suffragette, 98.

4 Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 154.

5 Billington-Greig wrote this in the book she would publish later in 1911, The Militant Suffrage Movement, sub-titled, ‘Emancipation in a Hurry’.

6 Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 155.

7 S. Pankhurst, The Suffragette, np.

CHAPTER 31: THE HEART OF THE ACTION

1 Review of Reviews, February 1911, xxxi.

2 Punch, 16 February 1911, 22.

3 All quotes in this section from Woman Voter, 6 March 1911, 1.

4 Melbourne Advocate, 9 July 1910, 26.

5 Box Hill Reporter, 14 May 1909, 7.

6 Box Hill Reporter, 14 May 1909, 7.

7 Argus, 21 October 1909, 8.

8 Votes for Women, vol. 3, no. 108, 1910, 426.

9 Review of Reviews, February 1911.

10 Review of Reviews, May 1911. Judkins was anti-suffrage, too, at least where British women were concerned.

11 Newfoundland had not yet joined the federation of Canadian provinces. New Zealand had by now determined that it would never join the Australian federation, though the possibility was still contemplated, at least by Australian politicians, until at least 1902.

12 Review of Reviews, July 1911.

13 Vida Goldstein, Woman Suffrage in Australia, 1911, VG Papers, TWL.

14 Montefiore, Victorian to Modern, Marxist Archive Online, np.

15 Montefiore, Victorian to Modern, Marxist Archive Online, np.

16 Montefiore, Victorian to Modern, Marxist Archive Online, np.

17 Syndicated to Clarence and Richmond Examiner, 24 May 1910, 5.

18 Bega Gazette, 15 July 1899, 2.

19 Critic, 25 January 1911, 18.

20 Montefiore, Victorian to Modern, Marxist Archive Online, np.

21 ‘Our Comrade Dora B. Montefiore in Melbourne’, Justice, 21 January 1911, 2.

22 Montefiore, ‘A Labour Party in Power I’, Justice, 15 April 1911, 15.

23 Montefiore, ‘A Labour Party in Power I’, Justice, 15 April 1911, 15.

24 Crookwell Gazette, 31 January 1911, 2.

25 Montefiore, ‘A Labour Party in Power II’, Justice, 22 April 1911, 15.

26 Singleton Argus, 31 January 1911, 4.

27 Goulburn Evening Penny Post, 28 January 1911, 6.

28 Letter of Muriel Matters to Bessie Rischbieth, 2 December 1910, Rischbieth Papers, MS 2004/3/1.

CHAPTER 32 : OUR V IDA

1 Woman Voter, 6 March 1911, 11.

2 Worker, 11 May 1911, 7.

3 Goldstein Papers, SLV, MS 7865.

4 British-Australasian, 9 February 1911, 9.

5 Portsmouth Evening News, 23 March 1911, 8.

6 In this quest, Muriel would be guided by the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Scientists, who had died aged eighty-nine on 3 December 1910. Eddy’s spiritual leadership was contained in her landmark book, Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures, the work that had influenced Vida Goldstein in her conversion to Christian Science. Vida, it appears, had laid more than one path for Muriel during her recent trip to Australia.

7 Crawford, Elizabeth, ed. Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary. London: Francis Boutle, 2013, 39.

8 Vida’s own report of the meeting, Woman Voter, 1 June 1911, 1.

9 Woman Voter, 1 May 1911, 3. The Woman Voter, edited by Vida’s sister Aileen in Vida’s absence, reported the UK tour in detail.

10 Worker, 11 May 1911, 7.

11 Woman Voter, 1 May 1911, 3.

12 Bomford, That Dangerous and Persuasive, 105.

13 Rischbieth Papers, 2004/4/232.

14 Woman Voter, 11 October 1917, 2.

15 Votes for Women, vol. 4, no. 155, 1911, 339.

16 S. Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, 394.

17 Kenney, Memories, 139.

18 Rischbieth Papers, 2004/1/12. Bessie was in London for four months in 1913. This remark is contained in letter to her niece written on 18 July 1913.

19 Manchester Guardian, 25 March 1911, 6.

20 Votes for Women, 31 March 1911, no. 160, 419.

21 C. Pankhurst, Unshackled, 172.

22 June Purvis, Christabel Pankhurst: A Biography. London and New York: Routledge, 2018, 242.

23 E. Pethick-Lawrence, My Part, 254.

24 Rischbieth Papers, MS 2004/4/1–44, Florence Rankin to Vida Goldstein, 25 March, 1911.

25 At only thirty-two years of age, Williams had already recorded hundreds of commercially popular ditties and music hall songs with titles like When Father Papered the Parlour and Little Willie’s Woodbines. Williams had first gone to London in 1899, where he made his name as Australia’s first pop recording star. He returned to tour Australia in 1910 where, like Muriel, touring her homeland in the same year, he was greeted as a prodigal son. It was during that tour that Williams penned The Land Where the Women Wear the Trousers. www.move.com.au/disc/australias-billy-williams

26 Rischbieth Papers, MS 2004/4/1–44, Florence Rankin to Vida Goldstein, 25 March 1911.

27 Brisbane Truth, 2 April 1911, 6.

28 The Australian Women’s National League was established in 1904 to safeguard monarchy and empire while combating socialism and protecting the interests of women and the home. By 1908 it had 10,000 members in Victoria alone, by far the largest women’s organisation. The AWNL campaigned for suffrage in Victoria, helping to convince conservative politicians that not all female voters would be of a socialist persuasion like Vida Goldstein and the Women’s Political Association. The AWNL played a pivotal role in the formation of the Australian Liberal Party. For a discussion of the influence and impact of the AWNL on Australian democracy see Marian Quartly, ‘The Australian Women’s National League and Democracy, 1904–1921’, Women’s History Review, vol. 15, 2001, 35–50.

29 Queenslander, 13 May 1911, 5.

30 Perth Western Mail, 25 March 1911, 20.

31 Riverine Herald, 24 March 1911, 2.

32 West Australian, 29 March 1911, 6.

33 Melbourne Weekly Times, 29 April 1911, 9.

34 Age, 28 March 1911, 6.

35 Melbourne Punch, 30 March 1911, 32.

36 British-Australasian, 23 March 1911, 22.

CHAPTER 33: COUNTING FOR NOTHING

1 Montefiore, ‘The “Conciliation” Bill’, Justice, 23 July 1910, 7.

2 Brisbane Telegraph, 4 April 1911, 2.

3 Kenney, Memories, 168.

4 Christabel Pankhurst predicted that the census would be used as ammunition for increased interference in women’s lives, particularly working-class women. C. Pankhurst, Unshackled, 143.

5 Jill Liddington attributes the first mention of the census protest to a WFL National Executive Committee meeting in June 1910. Dora’s article was first published on 23 July but was likely written earlier as Dora was in America from April to October 1910. Dora Montefiore and Edith How-Martyn were in prison together and may well have continued a friendship or correspondence.

6 Dundee Evening Telegraph, 9 March 1911, 2.

7 Birmingham Mail, 27 March 1911, 2.

8 Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 30 March 1911, 8.

9 Dundee Evening Telegraph, 9 March 1911, 2.

10 Diane Atkinson, The Suffragettes in Pictures. London: Museum of London, 1996, 98.

11 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 191.

12 Hampstead and Highgate Express, 25 March 1911, 5.

13 World News Sydney, 1 April 1911, 14.

14 Jill Liddington, Vanishing for the Vote: Suffrage, Citizenship and the Battle for the Census. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014, 173.

15 Kenney, Memories, 110.

16 Crawford, Campaigning, 42. Unless otherwise cited, all details of census night evasion from Liddington, Vanishing.

17 quoted in Wainwright, Miss Muriel Matters, 252. Tilly wrote a version of the same sentiment: No Vote No Census. Should women become persons in the eyes of the law this session—full information will be forwarded. Margaret Jewson was also registered as present at 91 Fentiman Road that night.

18 Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 159.

19 Liddington, Vanishing, 248.

20 West Australian, 4 April 1911, 7.

21 Globe, 29 March 1911, 4.

22 Gloucestershire Echo, 24 March 1911, 3.

23 Gloucestershire Echo, 24 March 1911, 3.

24 Gloucestershire Echo, 5 April 1911, 4.

25 E. Pankhurst, My Own Story, 193.

26 Goldstein, ‘Woman Suffrage in Australia’.

27 A 1907 Commonwealth report concluded that an enumeration of them has never been seriously undertaken in connection with any state census.

28 Northcott, Australian Social Development, 158.

29 Review of Reviews, May 1911.

30 Review of Reviews, May 1911, June 1911.

31 Dora Montefiore, ‘Australian Workers Condemn the Coronation’, Justice, 6 May 1911, 1.

32 Reminiscences of Peggy Fisher, Fisher Papers, NLA, MS 2919 Box 5, folder 26.

CHAPTER 34: A FESTIVAL OF EMPIRE

1 Scott, ‘How Australia Led the Way’, 22.

2 ‘The Press Boycott’, Votes for Women, 28 April, 1911, vol. 4, no. 164, 490. Emmeline Pankhurst published articles about the Resolution, reproducing it in full, on 6 January and 13 January 1911 in Votes for Women. ‘Australia’s Advice’—a report of the debate of the Australian Senate on the Votes for Women resolution on 17 November 1910, was published by the Woman’s Press as a penny pamphlet.

3 Dublin Daily Express, 5 May 1911, 10.

4 Goldstein, ‘How the Vote Was Won in Australia’, 10.

5 Goldstein, ‘How the Vote Was Won in Australia’, 9.

6 Votes for Women, ‘In Honour of Miss Goldstein’, vol. 4, no. 166, 1911, 532.

7 Stella Miles Franklin in Goldstein Papers.

8 Votes for Women, 26 May 1911, 558.

9 Kalgoorlie Sun, 26 February 1911, 8.

10 A.J.R, The Suffrage Annual, 1913.

11 Goldstein, ‘How Australia Gave Women Votes,’ Votes for Women, vol. 4, no. 165, 1911, 513.

12 Margaret Bettison, ‘Newcomb, Harriet Christina (1854–1942)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/newcomb-harriet-christina13270/text23471, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 14 March 2018.

13 quoted in Woollacott, Metropolitan Activism, 209.

14 To the British government’s relief, there had been no local repercussions after the tragic Shirtwaist factory fire in New York City on 25 March, the deadliest industrial catastrophe in the city’s history, in which 146 garment workers were killed—123 of them women, mostly Jewish and Italian immigrants aged sixteen to twenty-three. Those who didn’t die in the blaze were killed when they jumped from the upper floors of the burning building, where workers were locked in to prevent them taking breaks. The fire led to a steep rise in union membership, an idea exercising the minds of the 11,000 Singer Manufacturing strikers in Scotland who had only recently gone back to work. Four hundred of the ‘ringleaders’ of the strike were sacked, precipitating further unionisation of the manufacturing sector.

15 India, Malaya and other Crown colonies were classified differently: as dependencies, not British Dominions—of which there was a sixth, the Irish Free State.

16 Review of Reviews, July 1911.

17 Northern Whig, 13 May 1911, 7.

18 Dora Montefiore, ‘Pageants’, Justice, 16 April 1910, 5.

19 Review of Reviews, September 1911.

20 Punch, 16 February 1911, 22.

21 Punch, 16 February 1911, 22.

22 Review of Reviews, December 1911.

CHAPTER 35: AN INCONVENIENT PERIOD OF DOMESTIC CLEANING

1 The record for the hottest July day was set in 1911 and not broken until 2006.

2 The Times, 28 July 1911. Quoted in http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/long-hot-summer-the-great-british-heat-wave-of-1911-5329910.html

3 Fisher papers, NLA MS 2919 Box 5, folder 26.

4 Northcott, Australian Social Development, 20.

5 Diane Langmore, ‘Prime Ministers’ Wives: Women in the Background.’ In Makers of Miracles: The Cast of the Federation Story, edited by David Williams and John Headon. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2000, 120.

6 Diane Langmore, Prime Minister’s Wives: The Public and Private Lives of Ten Australian Women. Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1992, 27.

7 Review of Reviews, July 1911, 450.

8 Thos. McKernall of Miners’ Union, Kilmarnock, quoted in Day, Andrew Fisher, 226.

9 Votes for Women, vol. 4, no. 169, 1911, 577.

10 Kalgoorlie Sun, 30 April 1911, 13. Muriel’s engagement was reported widely in Australia.

11 The Times, 3 June 1911, 7. The visit of the NUWSS deputation was also reported by the Morning Post, the Daily Telegraph, the Morning Leader and other papers, in a clear indication that the press boycott was suspended at least while the Australian PM was in town.

12 Fawcett, Women’s Suffrage, 42.

13 The Common Cause, vol. 3, no. 113, 154.

14 The Times, 3 June 1911, 7.

15 The Women’s Library, LSE, 7VDG

16 Votes for Women, vol. 4, no. 172, 1911, 633.

17 The New York Clipper, 3 June 1911, 12.

18 Mid Sussex Times, 22 June 1911, 6.

19 Pall Mall Gazette, 24 June 1911.

20 Morning Post, 20 June 1911. Reprinted in Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 20 June 1911, 7.

21 Day, Andrew Fisher, 228.

22 Mitchell, J. Malcolm. Colonial Statesmen and Votes for Women: Lord Curzon Answered. London: Women’s Freedom League, 1912.

23 quoted in Souter, Lion and Kangaroo, 197.

24 William Lyne was a veteran political player who was, at that stage, a pro-Labor independent in the Federal Parliament.

25 Daily Telegraph, 20 June 1911.

26 Morning Post, 21 June 1911.

27 Daily Chronicle, 30 June 1911.

28 New-York Tribune, 26 June 1911.

29 Shepherd diary, NAA, A1632, 1, part 2, 32.

30 Shepherd diary, NAA, A1632, 1, part 2, 32.

31 The Times, 30 June 1911.

32 Liverpool Courier, 5 July 1911.

33 The Times, 1 August 1911, 13.

34 Hobart Mercury 2 August 1911, 5.

35 A. Patriot was the pseudonym of artist and illustrator Alfred Pearse. Pearse was a weekly contributor to Votes for Women and also designed posters for the suffrage campaign. With Laurence Houseman, he set up the Suffrage Atelier in 1909, a collective of male and female artists dedicated to votes for women.

36 Review of Reviews, July 1911.

37 Review of Reviews, June 1911.

38 Adelaide Register, 12 June 1911, 7.

39 Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 162.

40 Woman Voter, 1 July 1911, 5.

41 Votes for Women, vol. iv, no. 164, 1911, 489.

42 Votes for Women, 12 May 1911, 523.

43 Woman Voter, 1 July 1911, 5.

44 Votes for Women, vol. 4, no. 166, 1911, 523.

45 The Vote, 13 May 1911, 27.

46 The Vote, 3 June 1911, 66.

47 The Vote, 20 May 1911, 42.

48 The Vote, 10 June 1911, 83.

49 The Vote, 24 June 1911, 110.

50 The Vote, 10 June 1911, 83.

51 The Vote, 10 June 1911, 83.

52 Robins, Elizabeth. Way Stations. London: Hodder and Soughton, 1913, 248.

53 Common Cause, 22 June 1911, 214.

54 Woman Voter, 1 July 1911, 1.

55 Woman Voter, 10 September 1912, 2.

56 Mr Stephens, California, US House of Representatives, 12 January 1915, National American Woman Suffrage, 1915.

57 Votes for Women, 19 May 1911, 549.

58 Votes for Women, 12 May 1911, 533.

59 Votes for Women, 19 May 1911, 549.

60 IWSA, Report of 6th Congress.

61 The Dover Express and East Kent News, 2 June 1911. 5.

62 Robins, Way Stations, 252.

63 Votes for Women, 9 June 1911, 595.

CHAPTER 36: THE GREATEST PROCESSION KNOWN IN HISTORY

1 Beatrice Harraden to Vida Goldstein, Rischbieth Papers, MS 2004/4/1–44.

2 E. Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World, 84.

3 Adelaide Register, 12 June 1911, 7.

4 C. Pankhurst, Unshackled, 185. Vida evidently worked herself to the bone to make the procession a success. George Bernard Shaw wrote to her two days before the march, Dear Miss Goldstein, No matter how much you may be occupied with the Procession, you must eat, unless you wish it to be your funeral procession. Why not eat here? Will you lunch with us tomorrow (Friday) at 1.30pm? Goldstein papers, SLV, MS 8648.

5 quoted in Tickner, Spectacle of Women, 66.

6 C. Pankhurst, Unshackled, 184.

7 C. Pankhurst, Unshackled, 184.

8 E. Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World, 254.

9 Review of Reviews, September 1911.

10 The Vote, 24 June 1911, 111.

11 Melbourne Weekly Times, 29 July 1911, 13.

12 E. Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World, 254.

13 Robins, Come and See, 250.

14 Age, 26 July 1911, 12.

15 Miss E.M. Doberer, Clarence and Richmond Examiner, 10 August 1911, 7.

16 quoted in A Changing World, 253. Same for other quotes in the following paragraphs.

17 Review of Reviews, September 1911.

18 The Vote, 24 June 1911, 110.

19 Robins, Come and See, 246.

20 Crawford, Campaigning, 54.

21 The Vote, 24 June 1911, 110.

22 This is a rare find. Many thanks to Eileen Luscombe for sharing her copy with me.

23 Jessie Ackermann, Australia, vii. Miss Majorie Birks and Miss Moore are holding the banner.

24 Age, 26 July 1911, 12.

25 It is probable that the other two are Lady Cockburn and Lady Macmillan, the next most politically and socially prominent women to march in the Australian contingent.

26 British-Australasian, 22 June 1911, 19.

27 Woman Voter, 1 July 1911, 5.

28 By 1911 developments in photographic technology meant that subjects did not have to stand still for long periods of time to take a clear image. A prolonged exposure cannot account for the tension in the women’s faces and postures. With thanks to Jane Lydon for advice on the history of photography.

29 Weekly Times, 29 July 1911, 13.

30 Fisher papers, MS 2919 Box 5, folder 26. Margaret Fisher’s hat is on display at the Museum of Democracy at Old Parliament House.

31 Woman Voter, 1 July 1911, 5.

32 Woman Voter, October 1911. 1.

33 Manchester Guardian, 12 June 1911, 8.

34 Punch, 22 June 1911, 11.

35 British-Australasian, 22 June 1911, 19. See also Age 26 July 1911, 12.

36 Western Mail, 29 July 1911, 40.

37 Melbourne Weekly Times, 29 July 1911, 13.

38 In the spring of 1911, London’s artists were asked for advice about how to decorate the city for the Coronation. The Standard published a long interview with George Coates regarding his views on the part Australia should play in the embellishment of the royal procession route. His ideas included a triumphal golden arch surmounted by a gigantic figure of a stock rider as well as distinctive animals, flowers and fruit. But, according to Dora, his suggestions were overlooked. In the end, the only part we both took in the coronation festivities was to walk in the women’s procession. Alice Trechmann and Miss Madden are named as the standard bearers of Dora’s banner in other reports of the procession. Dora’s reminiscences say there were four people carrying the banner, including herself but not George. The identity of a possible fourth bearer remains a mystery.

39 British-Australasian, 22 June 1911, 19.

40 Western Mail, 29 July 1911, 40.

41 Launceston Examiner, 5 August 1911, 2.

42 Launceston Examiner, 5 August 1911, 2.

43 Woman Voter, 6 April 1911, 8.

44 Punch, 27 April 1911, 4. Punch always needed a butt for its retrograde humour, and in this case it was not the suffragists, but Fisher himself, whom Punch regarded as a joke…a primeval, practical joke played at the expense of the whole nation.

45 Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, 23 June 1911, 26.

46 Wainwright, Miss Muriel Matters, 251–3. How adequately Muriel conveyed her intention to turn down his proposal is unclear, as Treharne did resign from his job at the Conservatorium to sail to London to settle there with his bride.

47 Bexhill-on-Sea Observer, 3 June 1911, 4.

48 Wagga Worker, 3 August 1911, 23.

49 Letter to Woman Voter, 20 July 1911, 1.

50 Letter, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence to Vida Goldstein, 17 December 1911, TWL, 9/20/063.

CONCLUSION: HISTORY IN THE MAKING

1 Muriel was joined by Dr Marion Phillips, a thirty-year-old Jewish Australian woman who had earned a PhD in political history at the London School of Economics. Phillips became the first Australian woman to be elected to a national parliament when she won a seat in the UK House of Commons in 1929. She was fifty-one years old.

2 quoted in Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 189.

3 June Purvis, ‘Remembering Emily Wilding Davison (1872–1913)’. Women’s History Review, 22 (3): 353–62, 358.

4 Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 237.

5 Standard, 22 April 1911, 3.

6 Woman Voter, 10 June 1913, 3.

7 Woman Voter, 17 June 1913, 3.

8 Woman Voter, 17 June 1913, 1.

9 Review of Reviews, September 191, 25.

10 Review of Reviews, September 1911. Stead perished on the maiden voyage of the Titanic when it sank in April 1912.

11 The Maternity Allowance was paid from general revenue direct to all mothers. (There were, of course, racial exclusions.) The payment was the equivalent of five weeks of a working woman’s wages. It was not seen as a dole, but a right, irrespective of whether the mother was ‘deserving’, ‘respectable’, rich or poor, married or unmarried. The payment was intended as an entitlement of citizen-mothers as recognition of the costs of bearing children. Marilyn Lake shows that the Maternity Allowance was both popular and well-utilised among women. See Lake, ‘State Socialism’, 55–61.

12 Sydney Sun, 27 April 1913, 19.

13 Adela Pankhurst Walsh cited in Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 249.

14 Ham, Paul. 1914: The Year the World Ended. North Sydney: Heinemann, 2013, 9. Ham argues that the bourgeois, bohemian ‘party’ went from 1870 until 1914.

15 Fawcett, What I Remember, 236. According to Fawcett, it was not only Asquith who needed a legitimate escape route. Unlike Australian politicians such as Edmund Barton, who had performed abrupt about-faces in their support for the female franchise, all British MPs needed to find ropes and routes down [to] make their descent safely and with dignity.

16 Age was not the only qualification (the voting age for men was twenty-one, and the property qualification was abolished for men with this same Act, enfranchising 5.6 million working-class men over twenty-one). To be eligible to vote, women also needed to be either married to a member of the Local Government Register, a property owner or a graduate voting in a university constituency. Unlike Australia, where all natural-born or naturalised women could vote so long as they were not Indigenous, only forty per cent of British women got the franchise in 1918. Women like Annie Kenney were denied the rights that Christabel Pankhurst now had, though they had fought shoulder to shoulder. It would not be until 1928 that British women won electoral equality with men.

17 Historian Sean Scalmer has called on today’s historians to resist the temptation to frame the national story ‘in martial terms’ instead displacing ‘the white-citizen soldier’ from the centre of the story when there is not sufficient evidence to support such centrality. Sean Scalmer, ‘Peace, Patriotism and the Australian Commonwealth: historiographical observations on nations and movements’, History Australia, 14:2, 2017, 287–8.

18 Bill Gammage, ‘Anzac’, in John Carroll (ed), Intruders in the Bush: The Australian Quest for Identity (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1982), 115.

19 Gammage, ‘Anzac’, 115.

20 John Hirst, Sense and Nonsense in Australian History, 47. Hirst’s essay is a direct response to the publication of Patricia Grimshaw et al’s Creating a Nation, in which the authors delineate the myriad ways in which Australian women contributed to nation-building.

21 Hirst, Sense and Nonsense, 48.

22 Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 5 September 1908, 2.

23 Northcott, Australian Social Development, 9.

24 Argus, 21 August 1908, 7.

25 Lake, ‘State Socialism’, 55–7.

26 Boston Woman’s Journal, 6 October 1906, np.

27 Speech to Labor Banquet, published widely, but here Votes for Women, vol. 4, no. 169, 1911, 577.

28 One Australian journalist recognised the shift as early as 1916. The war is making us see many things in a new light, he wrote, A certain youthful tendency to brag that has been characteristic of us, a certain provincial narrowness and superiority, and a consequent rudeness to other peoples are no longer befitting a nation that is entitled to inscribe ‘Anzac’ on its banners. Sun, 10 December, 1916. For a longer discussion of this argument, see Clare Wright, ‘“A Splendid Object Lesson”: A Transnational Perspective on the Birth of the Australian Nation’. Journal of Women’s History, 26(4), 2014, 12–36; Lake, Marilyn. ‘1914: Death of a Nation.’ History Australia 12, no. 1 (2015): 7–24.

29 Kalgoorlie Miner, 11 April 1916, 5.

30 Truth, 11 June 1916, 7.

31 Maureen Castens to Ms G. Hart, 12 January 1988 NAA: A463 1987/2824.

32 ‘Women’s Banner is Coming Home’, National Times, 11 October 1987 NAA A463 1987/3770.

33 Susan Ryan, 24 December 1987, NAA: A463 1987/2824.

34 Dale Spender to Gillian Bonham, 30 June 1987 Women’s Suffrage Banner Historical Research Report, NAA A463 1987/3770.

35 The NWCC was an umbrella organisation representing sixteen women’s associations, more traditional women’s organisations and feminists alike. Briefing to the Prime Minister by Sue Brooks, January 1988. NAA A463 1987/3770.

36 James Mollison to Edith Hall, Appendix, Women’s Suffrage Banner Historical Research Report NAA A463 1987/3770.

37 The ACTU’s request was denied.

38 Di Lucas to NWCC Banner Task Force, 5 January 1988, NAA: A463 1987/2824.

39 Sue Heard to Edith Hall, 7 January 1988, NAA: A463 1987/2824.

40 Edith Hall to Di Lucas, 29 January 1988, NAA: A463 1987/2824.

41 Andrea Coelli, ‘Historic Banner Returns’, Canberra Times, 9 March 1988, 18.

42 Office of the Status of Women, news release, 8 March 1988, NAA A463 1987/3770.

43 Coelli, ‘Historic Banner Returns’, Canberra Times, 9 March 1988, 18.

44 Conservation of Australian Women’s Suffrage Banner, NAA A463 1988/3222 part 1.

45 On 12 June 2002 custodianship of the banner was fully transferred to the Parliament House Gifts Collection to mark the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in Australia. In December 2003 the Royal Australian Mint celebrated the centenary of women’s suffrage with the release of a dollar coin based on a representation of the banner. Approximately ten million of the one-dollar ‘suffrage coins’ were minted.

46 Women’s Suffrage Banner Historical Research Report NAA A463 1987/3770. My many attempts to locate and contact Dale Spender to confirm whether the kit was printed were not successful.