Grace Egerton & the Protean Cabinet

ODDS AND ENDS. The large hall of the Mechanics Institute was crowded again on Thursday: evening, when Mr. and Mrs. George Case gave another of their pleasing entertainments, entitled “Odds and Ends.” At the rising of the curtain Mr. Case, with a sorrowful expression of countenance, is bewailing his indisposition, which is attended with an…

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Votes for Women: the people

With the addition of two words,  the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 (pictured above) extended the right to vote in Federal elections to women as well as men.  Of the women who campaigned for this, you don’t hear much so I have started collection information about those that fall within the scope of this blog (active before…

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Dr Stone & Dr Berne

Constance Stone: first women registered as a doctor in Australia Studied USA, Canada & UK. Returned to Victoria & was registered 1890. Established Queen Victoria Hospital in Melbourne, operated “by women, for women”. Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) Wikipedia East Melbourne Historical Society: the life of Constance Stone (PDF) Australian Women’s Register (AWR) Index of…

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Mrs Gould

Bendigo Advertiser, 1 September 1855 I can’t find anything that tells me who Mrs Gould. She might be Angelina, wife of Thomas Gould, who died 1865 at her residence in Bull Street, which was near the shop (see next advertisement), but she could just as likely have been a daughter-im-law of the couple. (Hopes someone might come…

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Alice Henry

ALICE HENRY and HER TIMES When Alice Henry died, public interest was taken up with World War II. Her work in Australia was practically forgotten, her real career had been in America. Few Australians realised what part she had played in shaping those two countries as they are to-day Too few Melbourne people know of…

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Eliza

The Argus, 14 November 1853 Eliza Perrin/Robson, an “ordinary” woman of the Ballarat diggings. Eliza Hobson was born in Cheshire, England in 1829. In 1851, she married John Perrin in West Yorkshire, just months before he sailed to the goldfields to seek his fortune. A year later, and with her young baby daughter at her…

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Miss Milne

Jeannette Milne Photo from TAHO (Tasmanian Archive & Heritage Office), record, available Flickr Jeanette Milne was a nurse from Edinburgh who came out to Australia during the time when the “Nightingale system” of nursing was still being introduced, hospital standards were generally poor and nurses rarely received formal training. (That’d be 1880s and later for most…

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Midwives, 1899

Warwick Examiner, 19 April 1899 These are mostly for comparison with the earlier advertisements from 1820-1840. Evening News, 2 January 1899 The West Australian, 18 January 1899 Zeehan & Dundas Herald, 11 February 1899 Launceston Examiner, 19 July 1899

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Mrs Mellish

Annie Mellish, see larger image below. A bit about Annie Mellish, who wasn’t lost at sea, and  spent a few months living on Macquarie Island eating penguin eggs and shooting sea tigers, although they ran out of tea, sugar and coffee. From its discovery early in the 19th century, Macquarie Island was used by sealers,…

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Eliza

In the main street of Campbell Town, Tasmania is this statue, dedicated to Eliza Forlong who, on deciding in her 40s to emigrate to New South Wales to breed sheep, first walked across Saxony to find the best breeding stock, and therefore became one of the founders of the Australian wool industry. Australian Dictionary of…

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