With International Women’s Day on 8 March, we decided to re-double our efforts to add more women to our Collingwood Notables database. Especially in the nineteenth century, men seemed to be at the forefront of activity and therefore women have taken more effort to search out, but we have some wonderful people for you to read about, ranging from early colonists such as Georgiana MacCrae to Grace Vale, one of Melbourne’s first woman doctors. Just added are some remarkable residents of 18 St Heliers Street in Abbotsford: groundbreaking gymnasts Harriet Dick and Josephine McCormick, and pianist Rieke Parker. We have also just added Lisa Bellear, Collingwood’s first Aboriginal councillor. And coming soon will be local activist and Councillor Marion Miller, first woman Councillor Rita Jamieson, and two World War I nurses. Check them out in the Notables database.
Another addition will be a table of almost one thousand Collingwood women who signed the 1891 petition to give women the vote. A handful of dedicated women took to the streets to collect signatures. In just six weeks, almost 30,000 women and men from more than 800 different Victorian towns and suburbs signed the petition, affirming their belief that ‘Women should Vote on Equal Terms with Men’. Its tremendous length earned it the name of the ‘Monster Petition’.
This table will be incorporated in a new page we are about to add to our website: Collingwood Women. We will continue to add to this throughout the year.