Leading the Way

By Megan Hutching

A comprehensive history of the struggle for women's suffrage in New Zealand, including short biographies of the main people involved.
In 1893, wearing white camellias meant you supported women's right to vote - a red camellia in your lapel signalled the opposite. In 1893 New Zealand became the first country in the world to give 
women the vote, a milestone of which we are justly proud, but it wasn't 
easily achieved. the struggle was protracted and often bitter. the 
resolve and strength of the women involved were sorely tested, as their 
determination to have equality and the right to vote brought out the 
worst in their opponents. In LEADING tHE WAY, respected historian Megan Hutching tells the story 
of this momentous event, including profiles of some of the women who 
brought about such a massive social upheaval by changing the minds and hearts of the politicians. Among them are names you will recognise, while others will be less well known. they are some of the women who helped 
our great-grandmothers put aside their aprons and become enfranchised 
citizens of this country. their stories are an important part of our history 
as a socially progressive country, and their courage, loyalty and fierce 
belief in democracy still resonate today. Megan Hutching's most recent book was OVER tHE WIDE AND tRACKLESS SEA, 
a history of women pioneers in New Zealand. Author of six books of 
oral histories of the Second World War, as part of the 'New Zealanders Remember' series, she has an abiding interest in writing about the extraordinary lives of New Zealand women.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jun 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9780730446095

Megan Hutching

Megan Hutching has produced six books of oral histories of the Second World War, in the ‘New Zealanders Remember’ series, including most recently, Last Line of Defence: New Zealanders Remember the War at Home. Her first major piece of research was on women opposed to war in New Zealand in the early twentieth century, and this sparked her abiding interest in writing about the extraordinary lives of ordinary women.

Book preview

Introduction

On 19 September 1893 New Zealand women won the vote. We were the first country in the world where women could vote in parliamentary elections. I think that is worth repeating—we were the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote in national elections.

It is an accomplishment of which to be proud. It was the result of a lengthy campaign by a number of determined women and men who used a range of methods to interest the public and politicians in the issue, and then build support in the House of Representatives and in wider society.

When I was studying History in the Fifth Form—and that term, and the fact that I do not know what the modern equivalent is, dates me—I loved it. Such interesting stories about the Russian and Chinese revolutions that helped me understand why events were happening in the contemporary world. Then we moved to the New Zealand part of the course and it was like walking in sticky mud. It was so dull. I cannot remember exactly what the topic was, but it involved learning about various pieces of legislation. It was quite possibly about the social reform legislation introduced by the Liberal government of the 1890s and early 1900s—of which women’s suffrage was a part. I remember thinking that I would do anything rather than study New Zealand history. Other countries’ history was interesting; New Zealand’s was dull.

Since then, I have learnt a lot about New Zealand history, and have completely changed my mind. What a fascinating history we have. And the story of the campaign to get votes for women is a great example. We have heroines (Kate Sheppard), we have villains (Richard Seddon and Henry Fish); we have drama as electoral bills are introduced into parliament, only to fall at the last hurdle; we have women making an appearance in the public life of New Zealand, many for the first time; and we have success, snatched from the jaws of defeat.

And then, after struggling for the right to vote for so long, women were able to exercise that right just two months later. How exciting must that have been?

One of the questions I asked myself when I began this book was whether another book on the fight for the franchise was necessary. When we celebrated the centenary in 1993, historians around the country produced all sorts of publications. Some of them were general histories of the campaign, some were focused on a particular area, some were collections of biographies of women. All of these books, large and small, uncovered hidden stories of women’s activities at the time. What more needed to be said, I wondered. Then I realised that not only was the centenary over fifteen years ago, but there were different ways of looking at the campaign.

The first three chapters of this book are a history of how the vote was won. The second part of the book is a series of biographies of some of the well-known and less well-known women, and a few men, who were significant in the story of the franchise in New Zealand.

I have taken the opportunity in the third chapter to write at length about the election campaign and election day, 28 November 1893, because of its uniqueness. Never before had women voted in a general election, and as a result there was a considerable amount of newspaper coverage. I also felt that it would be interesting to write about what those extraordinary women who had expended so much time and energy during the suffrage campaign did next. Did they collapse, exhausted, and vow never to do such a thing again, or did they continue their work to extend the rights of women? As it turned out, they did both, but the women I have written about in this book mostly continued their public work for the extension of women’s rights. I have included Kate Sheppard—her contribution could not be overlooked—and others whose names may be less familiar, such as Marion Hatton from Dunedin, and Annie Schnackenberg from Auckland.

I thought, too, that the role of some of the male politicians needed to be acknowledged. If it had not been for men such as Sir John Hall and Sir Robert Stout who introduced bills to parliament which included women’s suffrage, the measure could not have passed. Women may have been the prime movers in the campaign but, practically, it needed men to make it happen.

Similarly, I wanted to show that the ability to vote was just the first step. Women wanted to be able to stand for parliament as well, but that did not happen until 1919. I decided that I would include a chapter on the first three women who stood that year—Aileen Cooke, Rosetta Baume and Ellen Melville. Except for Ellen Melville, whose name is familiar to Aucklanders, these women are now forgotten. And then I realised that I needed to include a chapter on the first woman to be elected, Elizabeth McCombs.

They are all remarkable people. Behind them, helping and supporting, making sure that letters were written and signatures were collected for the suffrage petitions, there were innumerable other women whom we know little about. I have tried to mention some of these as we go along. Many of them were rural women, whose activities were noted in many of the local suffrage histories produced in 1993. There were also Maori women, such as Meri Te Tai Mangakahia, but her focus was on the Kotahitanga parliament, and she does not seem to have been involved in the general campaign. I hope that when you read the biographies in this book, you will also think of those innumerable nameless women. I remember my own surprise and pride when I discovered that some of my Hutching relatives from Woodville had signed the suffrage petition. The discovery immediately connected me to the campaign in a very personal way.

We have witnessed an enormous arc of progress since 19 September 1893. It took a long time for women to be given the right to stand for parliament, and many years before one was elected. The number of women members of parliament (MPs) was small, and it was not until the introduction of mixed member proportional (MMP) representation in 1996 that the numbers began to increase. They still do not reflect the proportion of women in the population. Still…we have had some significant achievements in the past 16 years since the suffrage centenary—two women prime ministers, two women governors general and a woman as the chief justice.

In some ways we take those achievements for granted, in the way that we take the presence of Kate Sheppard on our ten-dollar note for granted. But reported comments about the women who hold prominent public positions, which concentrate on their gender rather than their abilities, make us realise that we still have a way to go before women and men have equal rights in the way that Kate Sheppard and her sister suffragists desired.

I hope this book convinces you, too, that New Zealand history is exciting and interesting, and tells us great stories about ourselves and why we are the people and society we have become.

A note about terms and definitions: I have used the words ‘suffrage’, ‘franchise’ and ‘the vote’ interchangeably in this brief history. The first two mean the same—the right of voting in political elections—and the third is shorthand for the same thing. I have mostly not used ‘women’ or ‘female’, assuming that is taken for granted in a book about women’s suffrage.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the people, mainly women, who researched and constructed stories from tiny, disparate pieces of information, and then published what they had found during the suffrage centennial year in 1993. Without that effort, I would have had great difficulty writing this book.

As usual, the archivists at the Kinder Library at St John’s Theological College, and at the Auckland Museum were very helpful, as were the staff in the Auckland Research Centre at the Auckland City Library. And I appreciated the lack of criticism from the circulation staff at that library when I renewed books and constantly paid fines for late ones. What an exceptional treasure public libraries are.

The National Library’s digitisation project, ‘Papers Past’, was extremely helpful. It allowed me to cover the 1893 election campaign and election day in some detail, and the fact that you can search it made tracking down some of these women very simple. It is a great resource.

I have had the usual terrific support from the team at HarperCollins. My especial thanks to Tracey Wogan and Lorain Day (who had the idea for this book), who have sustained me through those last, painful stages of writing. Thanks also to Sue Page for editing the manuscript.

And while I am acknowledging support, Mark Watts has cooked meals, done housework, supplied wine and given me constructive and valuable feedback on the draft chapters. His sons, Henry and Barnaby, are probably tired of the sound of the word ‘suffrage’, although Henry does like books about the nineteenth century because of all the Henrys they contain. Thanks and love to the three of them.

October 2009

Chapter 1

Laying the foundations

When this story starts—in the late nineteenth century—New Zealand was not the only place where women wanted the right to vote. What’s more, the campaign for women’s suffrage was not the only social reform being sought at the time. That campaign, which is the subject of this book and which culminated in success with the passing of the Electoral Act on 19 September 1893, was part of the slow extension of rights to women that occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century. If we look at the midpoint of the century—1850—we can see that married women did not have control over property that they had brought to their marriage; they had to prove aggravated adultery if they wanted to divorce their husbands (husbands only had to prove adultery); no woman—married or not—had the right to vote; apart from teaching, the professions were not open to women, and few women were able to support themselves financially.

The franchise was extended slowly to women in this country. It started in 1875 when women ratepayers were given the right to vote in local body elections. This marked the beginning of a twenty-year period in which women were slowly granted more opportunities to exert their political will. In 1877, for instance, adult women were able to stand for school committees, and to take part in the election of members of these committees. But the right to vote in parliamentary elections was the greatest prize for women, and to achieve it took fifteen years of activity in the House of Representatives and seven years of public agitation by women.

New Zealand was not the only country where this type of campaign was being waged. Similar activities were taking place in Britain and its colonies, past and present, around the world. Women were given the franchise in the United States territory of Wyoming in 1869, and in Utah the next year. (Utah rescinded the right in 1887, before restoring it in 1896.) In 1881, women ratepayers on the Isle of Man were given the right to vote, although the United Kingdom as a whole did not extend this to women on the same basis as men until 1928.

In New Zealand in 1878 an Electoral Bill, introduced by Robert Stout and giving women ratepayers the right to vote in general elections, was passed by both Houses of Parliament. It did not become law because of a conflict between the two Houses about universal Maori manhood suffrage. At the time (and until 1951) New Zealand had two Houses of Parliament. The House of Representatives consisted of men elected at the general elections. The Upper House, or Legislative Council, was made up of men appointed by the government of the day. Unsurprisingly, there was a tendency for governments to appoint to the Legislative Council men who would support the government’s electoral programme. As we will see, the ability to make these appointments became significant in the government’s machinations in 1893.

Some of the MHRs (elected politicians were called Members of the House of Representatives in those days, to differentiate them from members of the Legislative Council) who supported the extension of the franchise to women in the 1878 Electoral Bill had been influenced by reading The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill, which had been published in 1869 and which argued for equality between men and women. One manifestation of that equality, Mill wrote, should be that both women and men were able to vote. It was not a widely accepted opinion at the time, but among the notable supporters in this country were MHRs Robert Stout, Sir John Hall, Alfred Saunders and Julius Vogel. Vogel, for example, was often reported as saying that women should have ‘as unrestricted a right to vote as men had’.¹

The 1877 election resulted in Sir George Grey leading the subsequent government. He and his supporters had campaigned during the run-up to the election on the issue of giving women the vote. Robert Stout’s 1878 Bill was a result of this campaign pledge. It failed to become law, but the next year, under a new Prime Minister, John Hall, it seemed possible that it might succeed. Again it was not to be so, this time because of arguments between members of parliament over whether all women should be given the right, or just women who were property holders. There was one advance made under Hall’s premiership though, that of universal male suffrage. In 1879 all Maori men over the age of twenty-one were granted the same right to vote in parliamentary elections as Pakeha men enjoyed. In 1880 and 1881, James Wallis, the MHR for Auckland City West, introduced Women’s Franchise Bills into the Lower House, but neither made it past their first reading.

The opinion of Invercargill MHR Henry Feldwick gives us some insight into the thought patterns of the time. In 1878 he implied that it was a waste of time to be talking about ‘mere abstract questions’, such as giving women the right to vote, when there were ‘practical matters’ to be resolved.² He felt that parliament should concentrate on such things as finance and building roads. It’s apparent that something more needed to be done to encourage MHRs to prioritise suffrage. In order to get the outcome they were after, women who wanted the vote would have to develop strong relationships with sympathetic MHRs, to encourage them to vote in favour of Bills giving women the vote when they were introduced to the House. Women would also have to demonstrate that they were eager to have the right to vote.

Among the women who had already publicly stated that their sex should be given the franchise was Mary Ann Müller of Blenheim. Writing under the pseudonym ‘Femina’, Mary Ann contributed articles on women’s rights to the Nelson Examiner. Her first marriage had been unhappy and she was very conscious of the limited rights women had over their property once married. Mary Ann was also an ardent supporter of women’s suffrage.

She had to work quietly because her husband, Stephen Müller, did not agree with her views. Fortunately she had the support of a relative, Charles Elliott, who was the editor of the Nelson Examiner, and he published her articles in his paper and also distributed her writings more widely. In 1869 Mary Ann wrote a pamphlet entitled An Appeal to the Men of New Zealand. In it she asked, ‘Why has a woman no power to vote, no right to vote, when she happens to possess all the requisites which legally qualify a man for that right?’³ How could women make a proper contribution to the progress of the nation if they were not able to exercise this basic right? Mary Ann noted that women were just as interested in current affairs and politics as men were, but that they were discouraged from showing this interest. Why should New Zealand not lead the way, she asked, and give women the right to vote?

She sent a copy of her pamphlet to John Stuart Mill, who in turn sent her a copy of The Subjection of Women. He congratulated her on her pamphlet, saying that he read it with ‘great pleasure’, and that Mary Ann had ‘made an excellent beginning’ in the struggle to gain equal rights for women.⁴

Another early equal rights advocate was Mary Ann Colclough, who wrote letters to the New Zealand Herald under the pen name ‘Polly Plum’ in the early 1870s. At the time, Mary Ann was a widow, and she looked after her two children by running a school for girls in Auckland. She, too, had been influenced by reading John Stuart Mill and was particularly exercised by the legal position of married women. As she put it, ‘I am a woman’s advocate, because I am convinced that women are placed in an unjust position by law, and because I have experienced, and do still experience, many of the evils that position entails on women.’⁵ She argued that people should live by the Biblical golden rule; that is, treat others as you would like to be treated yourself. In a letter to the Herald in July 1871, she wrote that one of the reasons some men were opposed to any extension of women’s rights was because they dreaded being

brought to endure some of the ills which hitherto we [women] alone have borne…I will ask any young man just entering on his life, if he would like to contemplate this fate. That all he has, or can have, or can earn, shall be absolutely at the disposal of his wife, that it shall be in her power to take away from him those dear children…to force him to obedience, keep him poor if she please, while she has plenty, and leave him penniless if she dies first and it pleased her to do it.⁶

She supported women’s right to vote because she felt so strongly about equality between the sexes, and because she felt that women should not be subject to laws which they had no part in making.

Mary Ann was also a great supporter of extending the possibilities of education for girls and young women. This began to happen in the late 1870s: in 1877 an Act was passed that introduced free compulsory primary education for children. In the same year, Kate Edger became the first woman university graduate in New Zealand, gaining a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics and Latin. She had applied to be admitted to the University of New Zealand, giving her age and her qualifications, but not stating her gender. The university accepted her application, and reacted pragmatically when they discovered her sex, believing that it would cause more difficulties to refuse her application than it would to let her study. Kate taught at Christchurch Girls’ High School after graduating, and while there completed a Master of Arts at Canterbury University College.

Women soon followed her example and began to study at the various university colleges around the country. (At the time, the university colleges together made up the University of New Zealand. They did not become separate universities until 1961.) Kate was a supporter of women’s suffrage and became a leading figure in the Nelson branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in the late 1880s. She was active in the suffrage campaign, chairing meetings and making speeches. She was often held up as an example of the inadequacy of a system in which politicians maintained that women were not capable of voting, even when they were educated to the same level as men. Kate Edger had an MA, suffragists noted, but on election day she was ‘denied a vote given to the least literate of men’.⁷ These women and others like them prepared the way for the suffrage campaign, which really got underway in the late 1880s.

The failure of James Wallis’s women’s franchise bills and the attitude of MHRs such as Henry Feldwick, had shown that to achieve suffrage, women needed to organise themselves and demonstrate that they were eager to vote. It was just the right environment for the arrival of a representative of the WCTU, who landed in New Zealand in 1885 with the intention of setting up a union here. The WCTU had been established in the United States in 1874, and in 1879 Frances Willard had been elected president. She was an inspirational woman and was responsible for broadening the interests of the WCTU from temperance to almost anything that touched women’s lives. Her slogan was ‘Do Everything’. As a result, the WCTU worked for social reform on a broad front. As well as promoting temperance, the women visited prisons, set up kindergartens and taught in Sunday schools, and were even involved in dress reform for women. Willard had great ambitions for the WCTU and in the early 1880s she was responsible for sending women from the United States to help set up unions in other countries.

The woman selected to come to New Zealand was Mary Leavitt. After arriving in Auckland she travelled around the country speaking to groups of interested women. At a meeting at St Paul’s Church in Christchurch’s Cashel Street, Leavitt spoke on the subject of ‘Woman, her Duties and Responsibilities’. Her lecture provides a vivid picture of how the WCTU thought and worked. ‘It was now generally admitted,’ she said, ‘that no one human being should have the power to say that another should have only a limited freedom.’ Women, ‘as an integral part of humanity’ were entitled to the same freedom as men. ‘It was said that women could not fulfil certain duties; that they could not, for instance, be Judges, but she contended that though all women were not fit to be Judges, neither were all men.’ It was, she continued, ‘very much a question of education and training’. Men, ‘with all their boasted superior mental powers, would be unable to make an angel cake, or a decent bonnet, unless previously taught, just as much as women were unable to do men’s work, for which they had received no preparatory training.’⁸

With the help of Anne Brame, Mary established an Auckland WCTU, and then travelled to Wellington, where she met Anne Ward, whom she persuaded to take a leadership role in the fledgling organisation. Ward was the wife of Dudley Ward, a judge and former MHR. Anne was motivated to become involved with the WCTU because of her devout Christian beliefs. When, in the early days of the WCTU, someone reminded her of her public position as a judge’s wife, she replied that her position was that of a servant of Christ.⁹

Anne Ward spoke at meetings throughout the country about temperance and the work of the WCTU. She helped establish unions in Wellington, Nelson, New Plymouth, Patea, Hawera, Wanganui and Ashburton, and became the first national president of the WCTU. Her interest was more in temperance than in women’s suffrage, but for the WCTU the two were inextricably entwined.

From temperance to suffrage

What does a temperance organisation have to do with women’s suffrage? A fundamental principle of the WCTU was that women should be able to vote, and that was tied into all the other things they hoped to achieve. Frances Willard had called the right for