Julia Margaret Guerin Halloran Lavender (23 April 1858 in Williamstown, Colony of Victoria – 26 July 1923 in

Adelaide Adelaide ( , ; ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital and most populous city of South Australia, as well as the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. The name "Adelaide" may refer to ei ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...

), known popularly as Bella Guerin, was an Australian

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

, women's rights activist, women's suffragist, anti- conscriptionist, political activist and schoolteacher.

Early life

Guerin was born on 23 April 1858 in

Williamstown, Victoria Williamstown is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria (state), Victoria, Australia, south-west of Melbourne's Melbourne central business district, Central Business District, located within the City of Hobsons Bay Local government areas of Victoria, ...

. She was the daughter of Julia Margaret (née Kearney) and Patrick Guerin; her parents were both born in Ireland. Her father worked as a penal sergeant and rose to the rank of governor of gaols. Having studied at home to pass matriculation in 1878, Bella became the first woman to graduate from an Australian university when she gained her B.A. from the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...

in December 1883, becoming M.A. upon application in 1885.

Career

Teaching

She taught first at Loreto College, Victoria, urging higher education scholarships for

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girls to produce 'a band of noble thoughtful women as a powerful influence for good'. She married civil servant and poet Henry Halloran at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne, on 29 June 1891. Halloran, then aged 80, had addressed a laudatory poem to her after seeing a graduation portrait in 1884. He died in Sydney on 19 May 1893, leaving her with an infant son, Henry Marco. A second marriage at Christ Church, St Kilda,

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on 1 October 1909 to George D'Arcie Lavender, thirty years her junior, was apparently short lived. Returning to teaching from financial necessity, Bella taught in Sydney, then Carlton, Prahran and East Melbourne. From the mid-1890s she frequented suffragist circles, becoming office-bearer in the Bendigo Women's Franchise League while running University College, Bendigo from 1898 - 1903. From 1904 to 1917 she taught at Camperdown and in a succession of small

schools at South Yarra, St Kilda, Parkville and Brunswick with diminishing success. Her increasing political activity and disputes over conditions with the Education Department probably contributed to this outcome.

Women's Political Association

As vice-president of the Women's Political Association in 1912 - 1914 Guerin co-authored Vida Goldstein's 1913 Senate election pamphlet, but dual membership of non-party feminist and Labor Party organizations proved untenable. From 1914 she wrote and spoke for the Labor and Victorian Socialist parties and the Women's League of Socialists, and was recognized as a 'witty, cogent and instructive' commentator on a range of controversial social issues; they included the rights of illegitimate children, "brotherhood and sisterhood without sex distinction" and defence of English militant suffragettes.

Anti-war

An ardent anti-war propagandist, she led the Labor Women's Anti-Conscription Fellowship campaign during the 1916 referendum and spoke in Adelaide, Broken Hill and Victorian metropolitan and country centres against militarism and in defence of rights of assembly and free speech.

Politics

Appointed vice-president of the

Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also known as the Labor Party or simply Labor, is the major Centre-left politics, centre-left List of political parties in Australia, political party in Australia and one of two Major party, major parties in Po ...

's Women's Central Organizing Committee in March 1918, she aroused censure and controversy for describing Labor women as "performing poodles and packhorses", under-represented in policy decisions and relegated to auxiliary fund raising roles. Henceforth she organized for Labor "only so far as it stands for those principles represented by the Red Flag", believing in the parliamentary system but desiring capitalism's elimination.

Religion

In religion she moved from

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rationalism In philosophy, rationalism is the Epistemology, epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "the position that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge", often in contrast to ot ...

. She described her political evolution as from " Imperialistic butterfly" to "democratic grub" and experienced continual tensions as a socialist feminist within the Labor Party.

Personal life

Gerin's son, who practised as a doctor in Adelaide from 1915, described her as "the kindest and most gentle of women"; she saw herself as a "national idealist" and an "incorrigible militant", promoting women's participation in public life. She was regarded as an orator of "unique talents". She died in Adelaide on 26 July 1923 of cirrhosis of the liver, aged 65, and was buried in the Catholic cemetery at West Terrace.

Legacy

Being that Bella Guerin spent time teaching in Ballarat, the University of Ballarat (now known as Federation University Australia) honoured her by naming one of the two Mt Helen campus' Halls of Residence after her (the other being named after Peter Lalor, who led the Eureka Stockade in Ballarat). Guerin Place in the Canberra suburb of Chisholm is named in her honour. She was posthumously inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Guerin, Bella 1858 births 1923 deaths Australian feminists Australian people of Irish descent Australian Roman Catholics Australian schoolteachers Australian women of World War I Deaths from cirrhosis Activists from Adelaide People from Ballarat University of Melbourne alumni People from Williamstown, Victoria People from the Colony of Victoria Australian socialist feminists Australian women's rights activists Australian suffragists Australian women activists Australian anti–World War I activists