‘You girls don’t want votes, you want . . . [leering pause] something else.’

– Member of the Victorian Legislative Council, 1898

By the early 1890s, the movement for Australia to become a federation of colonies, collectively governing in their own right, was well underway. The idea of becoming a unified nation had been on the cards since at least 1880, and the ensuing years had been devoted to wrangling about such matters as defence, foreign policy, immigration, trade and transport.

Also discussed was whether Australian women should be given the vote, and there were differing views from the outset. For the first time in Australia’s colonial history, the men who had set up and ruled every public office and institution were having to consider whether to let women in. Men who asserted that women’s responsibilities began and ended with the home and children were being petitioned to give up some of their power.

It wasn’t as if giving Australian women the vote was an outlandish request: there were precedents, both in the United States and closer to home. New Zealand had granted voting rights to its women in 1893, the first sovereign nation to do so, though it stopped short of allowing women to stand for parliament. And as we have seen, the suffrage movement was well underway in Victoria by late in the decade.

Indeed, Victoria looked at one point as if it would become the first Australian colony to allow its women the franchise. James Munro, a conservative known as the ‘temperance premier’ because of his dislike of alcohol and its influence on the community, in 1891 welcomed a deputation of women’s temperance groups: they wanted to convince him that giving Victoria’s women the vote would help in the fight against excessive alcohol, one of the greatest dangers to the welfare of women and children. Unfortunately – and in a pattern that was to become depressingly familiar – the conservatives in his government refused.

Not discouraged, the WCTU combined with Victorian and Australian suffrage societies to put together what became known as the ‘monster petition’ to allow women the vote. The largest petition ever presented to Victoria’s parliament, addressed to the Speaker and Members of the Legislative Assembly, was a strong and stirring affirmation of belief:

That Government of the People, by the People and for the People, should mean all the People, and not one half. That Taxation and Representation should go together without regard to the sex of the taxed. That all Adult Persons should have a voice in Making the laws which they are required to obey. That in short, Women should vote on Equal Terms with Men. Your Petitioners, therefore, humbly pray your Honourable House to pass a Measure for conferring the Parliamentary Franchise upon women, regarding this as a right which they most humbly desire.¹

Dozens of women armed with pencil and paper took to the streets, roads and lanes throughout the colony, in city and country, knocking on the doors of people from all walks of life and getting as many signatures from women as possible. Their efforts created quite a stir: certainly women had petitioned other women for the sake of the Queen Victoria Hospital, but this was much bigger and more intense. Whatever their political views, the newspapers gave the ‘monster petition’ lavish publicity.

Vida, aged twenty-two and a member of the VWSS rank and file, took to the campaign with enthusiasm. She had, of course, previously worked for the hospital – but now she discovered that it was one thing to sit outside a bookshop asking passing women to give a shilling for a hospital building fund and quite another to actively seek expressions of agreement to a proposition many found confronting.

In her pamphlet ‘The Struggle for Woman Suffrage in Victoria’, written many years later, Vida described the experience. The canvassers, she said, had to be ready to deal with a range of anti-suffrage arguments and declarations, from ‘I don’t think we need it’ to ‘I’ll ask my husband what he thinks’. The petitioners were rejected by women ‘whose interests ended at the garden gate’ but welcomed by those who did charitable or philanthropic work. It was good to see, said Vida, that the wives of working men supported the cause, as did their husbands. Indeed, she believed that

the feeling of equality between men and women was most vital in the industrial suburbs. Never once were the canvassers met by a working man who said, ‘I won’t allow my wife to sign the Petition.’ On the contrary, if the husband opened the door he would call his wife, saying, ‘There’s a lady who wants to know if you want the vote.’ And invariably she did. But in the more favoured suburbs, a husband would quite frequently refuse to allow his wife to sign, or a wife would say meekly and wistfully, ‘I’d like to sign but my husband won’t let me.’

Still, Vida thought the whole experience had been very positive: ‘Wherever the workers went they found the great majority of women in favour of the vote, and of being on a footing with men in every respect.’²

Canvassing for the monster petition was Vida’s first experience of directly soliciting support for the suffrage. It taught her how to think on her feet and present a persuasive argument, and clearly. Nowhere is there evidence that she was a particularly shy person, but she wasn’t an extrovert like Brettena Smyth or Henrietta Dugdale, either, and was developing the clear-minded, modest and often humorous personal style that came to characterise her public life.

In the end the monster petition collected more than 30,000 signatures. It was almost 260 metres long, so that several attendants were needed to carry it into Victoria’s legislative chamber. The organisers had high hopes for its success, but Munro went back on his word. Certainly he presented a suffrage bill by itself to the lower house of parliament, where it was comfortably passed; but, being reasonably sure it would fail in the upper house, he neglected to pursue it. Instead, he attached the woman suffrage bill to another that extended voting rights to previously unfranchised men. Both parts of this bill were rejected. Naturally, the suffragists were bitterly disappointed.

So it would have been quite understandable if many supporters of woman suffrage felt a touch of schadenfreude when, in February of the following year Munro, deeply in debt, resigned as premier and fled to London. He had been the chairman of several companies, and the savings of many investors vanished: one infuriated investor physically attacked him in a Melbourne street. Munro – an evangelical Christian, not that that did him much good – became the symbol of Victoria’s corrupt land boom. He was declared bankrupt and eventually became an estate agent in suburban Melbourne.

Even though the petition failed in its primary object, it had far-reaching effects. So many women had pledged their support for the vote that they could no longer be ignored by government or the press. The Victorian petition also encouraged suffragists in other states, especially in New South Wales, to intensify the work that many were already doing. Another step forward seemed to be South Australia’s granting of the colonial vote to its women in 1894.

Women in Vida’s home state recognised the need for a central organisation enabling all pro-suffrage groups to speak with a united voice, and one was promulgated by none other than Annette Bear-Crawford. With Isabella and Vida Goldstein and Dr Constance Stone, she established the United Council for Woman Suffrage (UCWS), made up of representatives from each of the groups concerned with gaining the suffrage and improving the welfare of women and children. They included every women’s society in Melbourne, and delegates from the Trades Hall Council (THC). Bear-Crawford was the first president, and became one of the group’s most eloquent speakers. She excelled in lobbying parliamentarians and organising deputations, petitions and public meetings.

Despite this, and even with a united group of women, the next few years in pursuit of the Victorian vote could fairly be described as dispiriting. Bills giving women the state vote were introduced into the Victorian parliament in 1894, 1895 and 1896: all were defeated in the upper house.

A fine example of the treatment the women received was the reception given to a deputation from the UCWS on 6 September 1898. More than 100 women supporters of the franchise crowded into Parliament’s Queen’s Hall. They had to wait for almost an hour while members of the Legislative Council chatted among themselves and drank champagne, then Lowe and Bear-Crawford were summoned to another room to present their case. They had hardly started speaking when they were interrupted by ‘low jests and idiotic exclamations such as, “Who’ll mind the babies?” “Pah! New women!” and others not fit to print’.³ Lowe and Bear-Crawford kept their tempers and dignity, but doing so was clearly something of an effort. Meanwhile, the women staying behind in the Queen’s Hall were joined by members of Council. One man actually said to two of the younger women, ‘You girls, you don’t want the vote, you want . . . something else’ with a ‘leering pause’. One of the women told him what she thought of him, and he ‘slunk off like a whipped mongrel’. None of the disgusted women was in the least surprised when once again the suffrage bill failed to pass the upper house.

In November, Bear-Crawford left for England to attend the Women’s International Congress. Established a decade before, this was a convocation of women’s groups from several nations, including Britain, France, Holland and Australia, all of whom were vitally interested in the franchise. Vida helped organise her mentor’s final Melbourne meeting at the Prahran Town Hall at which Bear-Crawford, to a packed house, called for unity within the movement and urged her supporters to pay closer attention to political tactics. She left for England on the Ormuz accompanied by Beatrice Webb, who had been making a lecture tour of the colony. (Webb was never particularly impressed by Australian women, thinking they were not ‘ladylike’ enough.)

Vida had been put forward as her mentor’s natural successor, and was understandably nervous about this, very conscious that she lacked Bear-Crawford’s experience and assurance, especially in public appearances. She had to give speeches at various town-hall meetings, and often rehearsed in front of her family: no doubt Jacob, in particular, did not hesitate to give her advice.

In June 1899 came the shattering news that Bear-Crawford was dead – of pneumonia, in London, aged only forty-six. The Melbourne Leader, a pro-suffrage journal and an admirer of hers, wrote that ‘it would seem at the present moment that the guiding hand has been removed from one of the greatest progressive movements in Victoria . . . there is no overlooking the fact that what she has done for the women of this colony is a well nigh incalculable quantity.’⁴ The Leader described Bear-Crawford as ‘gentle, conciliating and invariably just’, gave due credit to her achievements, and noted her ability to arouse enthusiasm in those who worked with her. A memorial service was held in St Paul’s Cathedral on 4 July, and a bronze memorial plaque was erected at her local church, Christ Church in South Yarra. The Leader concluded: ‘She took up her work at a time when to be a “suffragist” was to argue yourself something of a “crank” . . . those times are passing into ancient history.’ Vida must have read that sentence with a fine mixture of emotions. If only.

Vida and her colleagues were determined that the best way to honour Bear-Crawford’s legacy was to make sure Victorian women won the right to vote. With renewed energy, they put up another woman suffrage bill in the second half of 1899. Vida was in charge. By now she was starting to hit her stride as a public speaker, and her talent was being noticed. One E. Miller, a member of the Legislative Council and an unrelenting anti-suffragist, advised his pro-suffragist colleagues to call Vida to the bar of the house and allow her to put her case, saying he was perfectly certain that if she came into parliament and made one of her ‘very able speeches in her own pretty little way’, she would convert opponents into supporters – though presumably not him.

This was the sixth time a woman suffrage bill had come before the Victorian parliament, and this time its opponents were ready. Their voluminous anti-suffrage petition had been signed by 24,000 women in eight weeks: the organisers, a collection of anti-suffrage groups, said they had made ‘no special efforts’ to secure that number of signatures.

The Woman Suffrage Bill of 1899 passed smoothly through the lower house, as similar bills had done so often before. Then came the second reading in the Legislative Council and, as so often before, the gallery was packed with women. There were also more legislative councillors than usual. For the debate on the bill the previous year, only thirty-four had bothered to attend; this time, forty-seven did.

Sitting side by side in the gallery, watching proceedings, were Vida and her father. It would be easy to assume that Jacob Goldstein had come to the debate in order to support his daughter and her colleagues, but according to The Argus they were on opposite sides. So why were they sitting together? The Argus, of course, had no idea, but gleefully reported the fact, describing it as ‘the lion lying down with the lamb’. They did not specify which Goldstein represented which animal.⁵

The Argus report suggests that the division between father and daughter was well known. On the face of it, this seems surprising. Jacob in many ways was a forward-thinking man for his time: he had supported his daughters’ education and had backed the campaign for the Queen Victoria Hospital. Perhaps he thought that giving women legislative rights equal to those of men was one step too far. Or perhaps he did not condone direct political action – he never showed much interest in entering politics directly himself – and thought women should not be involved in it. Perhaps he was less than supportive of the suffragist movement because he could not dominate it. He might also have been impatient with the long two-steps-forward-one-step-back campaign, involving as it did a great deal of effort with very little in the way of a tangible result. He and Vida might easily have clashed over this: it would be like Jacob to want to storm the barricades, whereas his wife and daughter were more cautious. He might well have disagreed with Isabella’s consultative and reasonable approach, and this could have been a source of strain in their marriage. Then Jacob Goldstein was someone who enjoyed being well known and liked, and many prominent men in Victoria were anti-suffragist.

So Jacob and Vida, seated together but in opposition to each other, were more than likely radiating extreme tension. If this is the case, Vida’s later comment that with a father like hers it wasn’t surprising she became a feminist – sometimes taken by historians as a gracious acknowledgement of Jacob’s liberal views – takes on quite a different flavour.