Emma Miller

In Queensland the path to federation was somewhat different to that of other states. For Queensland women, the question of Federation and the drafting of a constitution were secondary to the matter of achieving suffrage. Indeed, there were no women’s federation leagues established there. This may be partly explained by Queensland’s paradoxical record in the federation movement. Although influential in the early thinking about Federation in the early 1880s and represented at the 1885, 1890 and 1891 gatherings, there were no delegates at the Corowa Convention in 1893 nor at the 1897-98 Convention, brought about by an impasse about the method of electing delegates, and procrastinating premiers. In addition, unlike most of the other colonies, there was only one, the second, referendum to ratify the draft constitution, held in Queensland (September 1899) and that was carried by the smallest margin of any of the colonies, and with a very low turn-out of voters. In Queensland the focus appeared to be on territorial issues rather than on nation-wide issues. The boom in gold and mining industries reinforced Queensland regionalism, reflecting the earlier moves to excise northern and central Queensland to form separate colonies, based on strong regional loyalties.
Pressure groups such as the Australian Natives’ Association were less prominent in Queensland than in NSW and Victoria. Organised labour was also lukewarm about the need for Queensland to embrace Federation and outright opposition came from the farming and business sectors, fearing competition from NSW. It was the only colony with a developed tropical industry – sugar and bananas – which could be threatened by free trade in a federation.
Brisbane and its hinterland were the heartland of resistance because the federation proposal was seen as propelling them into the south-east economic sphere where their interests would be subordinated to Sydney and Melbourne interests.

In the period before an entrenched party system the 15 years of the women’s suffrage campaign between 1890 and 1905 saw seven changes of governor, nine premiers, three state elections, and two federal elections.
It is not altogether surprising, therefore, that the focus of women’s political activity in Queensland in the 1890s was on suffrage and labour matters, rather than on the question of federation. Two women, from very different backgrounds, and with contrasting political allegiances, were pivotal in the context of suffrage and labour reforms. The following notes are a very brief introduction to the activities of these two women, and detailed references for further reading on each of them, and of the suffrage movement in Queensland, are provided below.

Emma Miller (1893 – 1917)
Emma was born in Derbyshire in 1893, the daughter of Martha and Daniel Holmes. Her father was a bootmaker and a chartist, whose political beliefs had a lifelong influence on Emma. She had four children with her first husband, was widowed at 31, and remarried and emigrated to Australia at the age of 40. She was again widowed the following year and remarried her last husband in 1886.
She had worked for her father as a shoebinder and had become familiar with the social problems the industrial revolution brought to towns such as Manchester and Chesterfield where she had moved with her first husband, a bookkeeper. Once in Australia she was in contact with progressive thinkers, such as William Lane, and in had strong links with the labour movement. In her periods of widowhood she returned to her trade of seamstress, describing herself as a ‘gentleman’s white shirt maker”.
It was after her third marriage in 1886, to Andrew Miller, that she became more involved in union affairs, founding with May Jordan in 1890, Brisbane’s first women’s trade union, the Female Workers’ Union, since membership of other trade unions was denied to women. She was also a travelling organiser for the Australian Workers’ Union.
Emma Miller saw the establishment of a workers’ political party, women’s suffrage and equal pay as the means to improve the lives of working people. To this end she was a foundation member of the Workers’ Political Organisation, the forerunner of the Australian Labor Party, and a founding member of the Women’s Equal Franchise Association in February 1894, later becoming President and remaining in that position until 1905 when women were finally enfranchised for state elections in Queensland. She was a determined and effective campaigner, determined that the plural vote be abolished before women’s suffrage could be achieved, a stand supported by the labour movement with which Miller involved the WEFA more and more.
She is considered the mother of the Labor Party and was proud to be known as ‘Mother Miller’. She is remembered by a bust in the Trades Hall and a statue in King George Terrace.

Léontine Cooper (1837 – 1903)
Less is known of the early life of Léontine Buisson, the daughter of a French merchant and an Englishwoman, before her marriage to Edward Cooper, a surveyor, in London in 1869, and their emigration to Australia in 1871. In Brisbane she taught, first in a government school and then at Brisbane Girls’ Grammar School, and later turned to journalism, contributing articles and short stories for William Lane’s The Boomerang and Louisa Lawson’s The Dawn. She was concerned about the failure of the law to protect women and women’s lack of property rights and believed that central to women’s lack of rights was the lack of their right to vote.
She was the founding Vice-President of the Women’s Equal Franchise Association, formed in 1894, but resigned shortly after over disagreement over the organisation’s objectives and its ideological approach to women’s suffrage. The WEFA sought the vote for women on the basis of one-adult-one-vote, whereas some of its members, Cooper among them, sought the extension of the vote to women on the same basis as men, which might have involved the perpetuation of the plural vote.
Léontine led a breakaway group from the WEFA to form, within a month, the Women’s Suffrage League, an organisation with a more conservative bent, but one which continued its campaign until the turn of the century, and published a suffrage paper, The Star, between 1894 and 1985.
She died suddenly in 1903, sadly before she was able to cast a vote in the Commonwealth election on 16 December.
Further reading:

Léontine Cooper
Australian Women’s Register entry
Jordan, Deborah. ‘There is no question more perplexing at the present time and more frequently discussed than women’s place in society: Léontine Cooper and the Queensland Suffrage Movement, 1888-1903’. Hecate, vol. 30, no. 2, October 2004. A link to the article is here.
And many mentions in the works of Lees and Oldfield (below).

Emma Miller
Australian Dictionary of Biography entry
Young, Pam. Proud to be a rebel: the life and times of Emma Miller. St Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1991.
Young, Pam. ‘Emma Miller and the campaign for women’s suffrage in Queensland, 1894-1905.’ Memoirs of the Queensland Museum: Cultural Heritage Series, vol. 2, no. 2, 2002.
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Queensland suffrage movement
Centenary of Queensland Women’s Suffrage
Lees, Kirsten. Votes for Women: the Australian story. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1993
McCulloch, John. The Suffragists: 100 years of women’s suffrage in Queensland. Rockhampton: Central Queensland University Press, 2005.
McCulloch, John. ‘Why frontier Queensland beat urbane Victoria to women’s suffrage.’ Victorian Historical Journal, vol. 79, no. 2, November 2008
Oldfield, Audrey. Women suffrage in Australia: a gift or struggle? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University press, 1992 (Queensland chapter)

Background to federation
Irving, Helen (ed). A Woman’s constitution: gender and history in the Australian Commonwealth. Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1996
Irving, Helen (ed). The Centenary companion to Australian Federation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999 (chapter on Queensland by Geoffrey Bolton and Duncan Water

Northern Territory Women

In 2013 Canberra celebrates its centenary with a year-long program of new and exciting projects. The Canberra-based Australian Women’s History Forum will celebrate the month of March, including International Women’s Day on 8 March, by drawing attention to our Founding Mothers of Federation.

Our Territory Women database includes brief stories for the 82 women who participated in the Suffrage movement in the Northern Territory – just by placing their names on the 1895 Electoral Roll.

http://www.territorystories.nt.gov.au/handle/10070/215417

The Northern Territory has its own special story to tell…

Evlampia Holtze was born at her home in the Darwin Botanic Gardens on May 31 1896, approximately one month after her mother, Annie Holtze, voted in a landmark election. (Evlampia is seen above with her mother; with a friend playing tennis; and in her wedding dress.)

Annie was 37, a teacher married to Nicholas when she placed her name on the 1895 Electoral Roll, giving her the right to vote. The Northern Territory Times of the 1 May 1896 reported large numbers of women voting in that election, with enrolled women out-numbering men in two of the South Australian electorates. A change in legislation meant that South Australian women had become the only Australian women to be able to vote and stand for parliament and since South Australia was responsible for the Northern Territory at that time, Northern Territory women also gained the franchise.

On 5 November 1889, Mr J. Caldwell introduced a Bill to the South Australian House of Assembly to grant the franchise to women. It took five further years of struggle, but on 21 December 1894 and despite vehement opposition from Vaiben L Solomon, the Territory’s Senior Member in the South Australian Legislative Assembly, the Northern Territory Times reported that, “the Woman’s Suffrage Bill (which by then was known as the Adult Suffrage Bill) has passed all stages in South Australia.”

It had been passed by a vote of 28 to 11. The Bill was assented to in February 1895 and gazetted on 21 March, giving South Australian women (including the women from the Northern Territory) the right to vote for the House of Assembly and stand for parliament.

Preparations were made to enrol eligible women and one year later the first election was held in which women could exercise their new rights. Women had to be at least 21 years of age and either own freehold property to the clear value of £30 or a registered leasehold of £20 with three years to run, or right of purchase, or the occupancy of a dwelling house to the clear annual value of £25.They also had to be registered for six months prior to an election.

Regulations were publicised through the newspaper. Women were instructed to list their marital status as their occupation on the roll, but some women boldly registered as teachers, nurses and hotelkeepers. The registration process closed on 11 April 1896; on 25 April 1896 (in South Australia) and on 2 May 1896 (in the Northern Territory) women went to the polls for the first time. The Returning Officer for the election was Mr Nicholas Holtze, husband to Annie Holtze; Government Secretary and Curator of the Botanic Gardens from 1895 until 1912. The first “woman’s vote” was officially cast on Thursday 30 April via the post, as allowed under the new legislation.

No woman stood for election, so the contest was between three male candidates: Vaiben Solomon; Walter Griffiths and Frederick Finniss. Fred Finniss was the only candidate to have supported the women’s suffrage movement and it was anticipated that the women’s vote could make a significant difference to the results; however, Solomon and Griffiths were the successful candidates to be returned to the South Australian House of Assembly.  Solomon went on to become a member of the Australian Federation Convention in 1897 and the Convention that framed the Australian Constitution in 1897-98, before his election to the inaugural Australian Federal Parliament in 1901 as a Free Trade Member for South Australia. Griffiths held his seat until his death, becoming well known for his support for the separation of Western Australia.

Whilst the Commonwealth Franchise Act of 1902 altered the electoral rules once again, the Commonwealth had the right to enlarge the franchise of any state, but not curtail it, so women of the Territory continued to have the franchise rights fought for and won by their mothers.

Evlampia went on to lead an active life in Darwin where she married and had a family,

Her mother, Annie Holtze, had helped to earn Evlampia the right to participate fully in political affairs.

Contributed by:

Louise Paynter

Jessie Rooke – Courtesy of Tasmanian Department of Premier and Cabinet

Jessie Spinks Rooke (1845-1906)

Jessie Rooke was a Tasmanian suffragist and temperance reformer. Her story demonstrates the strong influence of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in campaigning for votes for women.

According to Vicki Pearce, “Jessie Rooke was one of the first women to gain prominence outside Tasmania.” In a memorial service held by the WCTU, she notes, “six of her women colleagues gave testament to her self-denying labour to the cause”. When women got the vote, Rooke said it would be proven that the “gentler sex” would use the privilege in the interest of “all that is pure and lovely and of good report”.

Born in London, Rooke arrived in Australia in about 1867. In Sydney, she became prominent in the British Women’s Bible and Prayer Union and the WCTU. She moved to Tasmania in the early 1890s where she became president of the Burnie branch of the WCTU in 1894 and of the state branch in 1898.

The WCTU became the focus of the women’s suffrage movement in Tasmania. In 1896 Rooke set out on a votes-for-women tour of Tasmania with the suffrage superintendent for the colony – Georgina Kermode. Wherever they went large groups turned up to meet the women. They collected campaign funds and distributed leaflets and put their case that “the Franchise should be extended to women as an act of common justice”.

The 1896 and 1897 campaigns each resulted in some 2000 signatures. The Legislative Council defeated bills to amend the Tasmanian suffrage in both years, but Rooke reassured her members their efforts kept the issue prominent. The union obtained a further 5500 signatures to support a referendum bill in 1898.

Rooke was also heavily involved in the National Council of Women, established in 1899, which worked closely with the WCTU in the suffrage campaign. As a WCTU delegate to the International Council of Women Conference in Washington in 1902, she supported Vida Goldstein in the campaign of the United Council of Women’s Suffrage for federal adult suffrage.

Becoming Australasian president of the WCTU in 1903, Rooke also founded the Tasmanian Women’s Suffrage Association, which attracted a membership beyond those interested mainly in moral and temperance issues.

It mobilised women for the forthcoming federal election, as the Commonwealth Franchise Act had been passed the previous year. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the Tasmanian Legislative Council conceded the state vote for white women.  After this was achieved, the association continued “to interest women in all laws relating to women and children”, educate members on wider political questions and encourage women to enrol.

It urged women to use their right to vote in federal elections. Women did not become eligible to stand for election to either Tasmanian House of Parliament until 1921.

Jessie Rooke was a hard worker, an inspiring speaker and a good mediator, highly respected by her fellow workers. She died on 4 January 1906 at South Burnie and is buried in Wivenhoe (Burnie) cemetery.

References:

Faye Gardam, “Rooke, Jessie Spink (1845–1906)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rooke-jessie-spink-13174/text23847.

“Jessie Spinks Rooke,” entry in Getting It Together: From Colonies to Federation – Tasmania, Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, Canberra, 2009

“Jessie Rooke,” from Tasmania, Dept of Premier and Cabinet: Significant Tasmanian Women.

Jordan, Renee, “Jessie Spink Rooke”, entry in Companion to Tasmanian History, edited by Alison Alexander, University of Tasmania Centre for Tasmanian Studies, 2006.

Pearce, Vickie, “A Few Viragos on a Stump: the womanhood suffrage campaign in Tasmania 1880-1920″, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Vol. 32 No. 4 1985 pp.151-164.

The Tasmanian Government website has created an online exhibition: Women and the the right to vote  

Vida Goldstein c1902, National Library

Vida Jane Goldstein (1869–1949)

Victoria was the first of Australia’s colonies to organise for women’s suffrage – and the last to gain the vote. Without the right to elect their parliamentarians, Victorian women were unable to vote on Federation in the Referendums of 1898 and 1899.

Yet the suffrage movement was no less vigorous – nor the women involved no less vibrant advocates of citizenship equality – than in the other five Australian colonies. In 1884 a group of women including Henrietta Dugdale and Annie Lowe formed the Victorian Women’s Suffrage Society and were joined by other prominent activists like Annette Bear-Crawford and Isabella Goldstein. As in the other colonies, the fight was shared by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), formed in Victoria in 1887.

Federalist and feminist

Ten years after they had taken up the fight for the vote, some women were joined by their daughters – one of these young women was Vida Goldstein, whom became a leading ‘Founding Mother of Federation’. She was 19 when she helped her mother collect signatures for an historic petition to the Victorian Parliament, the huge Woman Suffrage Petition of 30 000 signatures presented in the Parliament in 1891.

This was in the early years of the Federation movement that gathered strength through the intercolonial congresses of the 1890s. In Victoria as elsewhere the ideals and arguments for a new united nation echoed for suffragists their own case for equal citizenship.

As well as campaigning for the same voting rights for women and men, these organisations worked for equality in property rights, marriage and divorce, and the custody of children – in other words, the key barriers to women’s participation as equal citizens. By 1894 there were numerous groups working for these goals and Annette Bear-Crawford formed the United Council for Women’s Suffrage (UCWS) to coordinate the efforts of the numerous suffrage societies.

When Annette Bear-Crawford died in 1899, her protégée Vida Goldstein became leader of the women’s reform movement in Victoria when she made her first speech on the suffrage platform. That was also the year of the final Referendum when the Colony’s voters gave a resounding ‘Yes’ to the question of Federation.

An impressive speaker whose witty responses could disarm the most abusive heckler, Vida Goldstein was an articulate advocate for suffrage and equality for women. She read widely on politics, economics and law and spent long hours in the visitors’ gallery at the Victorian Parliament House absorbing debate and procedure.  learned procedure while campaigning for a wide variety of reformist legislation.

Miss Franchise: ‘Look at that hussy Miss Federation – but that’s the way with all men’ Western Mail 16 June 1899

Two organisations focussed on women’s suffrage and federation were created in Western Australia in the early 1890s.  The first was the international Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) formed to foster ‘Social purity, total abstinence, and womanhood suffrage’.  The second was the politically well-connected literary and cultural society, the Karrakatta Club for women. Amongst its strengths the Karrakatta Club fostered members’ public speaking skills.  A third organisation, the Women’s Franchise League, was formed in 1899 with an Executive of women ‘faddists’ drawn from these two organisations, plus key male politicians and supporters in the colony. This organisation deliberately set out to broaden the participation of women of all socio-economic status in the debate on women’s suffrage.

Continue reading →

Although women in the latter half of the nineteenth century were prevented from equal participation in parliamentary politics, many were active in pursuing educational, social and political reform. Their efforts seriously hampered by their inferior legal status, particularly their lack of the vote, in New South Wales as in the other colonies, they formed political organisations and lobbied hard for the franchise.

Maybanke Susannah (Wolstenholme) Anderson (1845–1927)

Lone Hand 2 February 1914 National Library of Australia

One such reformer who worked strenuously for both women’s suffrage and for federation was Maybanke Susannah Wolstenholme as she was known at this time of her activity.  Her interest in woman suffrage was driven by her understanding that only with the vote could women achieve the social changes she saw were so necessary and her interest in federation was an expression of her belief that it was the way to force the states, who were reluctant to join SA and WA in granting women the vote, to do  Continue reading →