Catherine Helen Spence (1825–1910)

Catherine Helen Spence, journalist, social reformer and novelist, was the leading woman in public affairs at the turn of the century in Australia. She was in the vanguard of first-wave feminism seeking equality of opportunity for women in this country, and was lauded as the ‘Grand Old Woman of Australia’. From the pulpit to the platform, she championed the rights of women, lobbied for greater child welfare provision, and argued for a more democratic electoral system.

Spence was born in Melrose, Scotland, in 1825. She emigrated to South Australia at the age of 14 with her parents and siblings and initially worked as a governess and briefly ran a small private school.

Nurturing literary ambitions since childhood, in her mid-twenties Spence began occasional paid journalism, a career which became long and distinguished. Her clear, wide-ranging articles were mainly on literature, politics and social issues. She is credited as the first woman novelist in Australia to portray antipodean issues with the publication in 1854 of her first novel, Clara Morison: A Tale of South Australia During the Gold Fever. The plots and characters of this novel and subsequent ones drew on her own experiences and circle of associates.

Around 1856, Spence converted from the Presbyterianism of her upbringing to Unitarianism. She became South Australia’s first woman preacher when she delivered a sermon to the Adelaide congregation in 1878.

Spence’s faith imbued her philanthropic endeavours. In 1872, she had co-founded the Boarding-Out Society, a voluntary organisation which superintended the fostering-out of state dependent children. She alternated between the offices of Honorary Treasurer and Honorary Secretary from 1872 until 1886. The next year the Society’s functions were taken over by the new State Children’s Council. She was an active member of the Council from its inception until just before her death. In 1897 she was the first woman appointed to the Colony’s Destitute Board, commissioned in 1849 to alleviate poverty.

An advocate of public education, in 1877 she was appointed to a local school board and supported the establishment in 1879 of the first government secondary school, the Advanced School for Girls. A year later, the South Australian Education Department published her book The Laws We Live Under. This textbook broke new ground by outlining citizens’ rights and responsibilities. It foreshadowed the introduction of courses on civics and legal studies in curricula across the country throughout the twentieth century.

Her interest in electoral reform was sparked in 1859 by an article on the Thomas Hare system of proportional representation, by the English social philosopher John Stuart Mill. She became an inveterate pamphleteer on the topic of proportional representation and in 1892 she proposed a modified version. Three years later she formed the Effective Voting League of South Australia and campaigned for the introduction of the scheme into the Colony’s electoral system.

In 1891 Spence joined the growing movement to secure the vote for women and became a Vice-President of the Women’s Suffrage League. She pushed the suffragists’ claims during her electoral reform campaign and throughout her 1893–94 lecture tour of the United States and Britain. She returned in December 1894 to witness the historic passing of the Constitution Amendment Bill through Parliament giving voting rights to the women of South Australia, the first Australian colony to do so.

Spence became Australia’s first female political candidate when she contested, unsuccessfully, the election for delegates to the 1897 Australasian Federal Convention. She had campaigned on the single issue of proportional representation.

In 1909, Spence presided over the formation of the Women’s Non-Party Political Association, which later became the League of Women Voters of South Australia.

Catherine Helen Spence died on 3 April 1910 in Norwood, Adelaide, while working on her autobiography, published posthumously later that year. She never married.

The Catherine Helen Spence Scholarship was established by the South Australian Government in 1911 to perpetuate her memory. It is generally awarded every four years to a South Australian woman to study social problems in Australia and abroad.

In 1999, a plaque honouring Spence’s achievements was installed at her Scottish birthplace.

Assistance from the State Library of New South Wales in the preparation of this biography is acknowledged.