In February 1923, the death of a woman in parliament buildings was reported across the country. Waiting to enter the ladies' gallery, the unfortunate woman had collapsed and suffered what was reported as a cardiac arrest. Left widowed in 1890 when her husband was drowned while swimming at Hawke's Bay's Petane Beach, 38-year-old Isabella Stuart Dick (nee Kennedy) was faced with the unenviable task of finding some means of providing for herself and her three children. She was remarkably successful. By 1893, Ella - as she appears to have been almost exclusively known - was running a boarding house on Napier's Reservoir Road, appearing in the 1894 Stone's Street Directory for Wellington and Hawke's Bay as a business of note. Post-1894, she disappears from the Napier record, resurfacing in 1896, this time in Wellington running a receiving home for abandoned and destitute children on Tinakori Road. Serving in this position for some time, she appeared in various newspaper accounts in the early twentieth century detailing the progression and ultimate introduction of the Infant Life Protection Act (1907) under which she was appointed district agent for Wellington. She retired in 1918, returning to Dunedin. Her death five years later in the halls of power to which she and 30'000 fellow activists had successfully appealed thirty years previously serves as little more than an interesting anecdote in the grand scheme of things. Credit: 'Woman's Tragic Death', New Zealand Herald, 17 February 1923, p.8. The manner in which women went about establishing themselves within their local communities provides a valuable insight into the society behind the suffrage victory. While Harriet Cobb possessed the skills, and equipment, necessary to make a name for herself within the Napier business sector, most other women did not have this opportunity. Charitable work, typically through church organisations, served as a valuable means by which such individuals could contribute to the community beyond their own household. Women involved in the suffrage campaign entered the political sphere from a number of platforms. Scholars have noted this disparity, particularly, in assessing the position of Māori and Pākehā women as it stood in 1893. For her part, Angela Ballara has argued that Māori women entered the political arena from a position of greater experience than Pākehā. On the whole, this experience was largely imported by participation in, or knowledge of, the Kotahitanga parliament. The Hawke's Bay Children's HomeThere were also differing levels of political awareness within the Pākehā population. For many women, signing their name in 1893 was their first political engagement of any real consequence. However, a number did already possess a degree of political experience, having served in some capacity on boards for local schools, churches, and some liquor licensing committees. Established in 1892 by a group of 'politically-minded Napier women', most of whom were affiliated with the Baptist church, the women involved in the development and maintenance of the Hawke's Bay Children's Home provide one such example. Wresting control from the local Charitable Aid Board, the Children's Home emerged as a site of political contention at a point when interest in the suffrage agenda was reaching its peak. Both Harriet Cobb and Ella Stuart Dick served as committee members, Harriet from at least 1893-95 and Ella from 1893-94 when she appears to have moved to Wellington. They were joined by fellow suffrage activists Emily Hill (Napier Women's Franchise League President), Bessie Brown (also influential in the WFL), and Helen Glover (signature witness and canvasser for the 1893 petition). Engaging in this political capacity, the women sought to challenge the Charitable Aid Board from a principally maternal perspective. While it may be interpreted as recognition of social autonomy, the establishment of the Children's Home relied upon wider societal acceptance of the authority of women's maternal influence in matters of child welfare. Consequentially, while there was some dispute from the Charitable Aid Board, and noted tension between some key figures and the women in question, the right for these 'politically-minded' women to intervene was largely respected. Sources and Further Reading Angela Ballara, ' Wāhine Rangatira: Māori Women of Rank and Their Role in the Women's Kotahitanga Movement of the 1890s', NZJH, Vol.27, no.2, October 1993, pp.127-139.
Raewyn Dalziel, 'The Colonial Helpmeet: Women's Role and the Vote in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand', NZJH, Vol.27, no.2, October 1993, pp.112-123. Kay Morris Matthews, Who Cared? Childhoods within Hawke's Bay Children's Homes and Orphanages, 1892-1988, (Napier: Eastern Institute of Technology, 2013).
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