Stick this up your Bloomers!

My picture here is of Louisa Lawson, 'Mother of Australian Women's Suffrage', outside her mother's dressmaking shop at Gulgong, New South Wales. Louisa was never rich enough to have such a shop of her own, just a flat in the slums with an ancient printing press and candle light.

Louisa is shown with her baby Charles, who was born on June 25,1869, just two years after her son Henry Lawson, the writer. So this must be 1870. Winter, possibly, by the bulkiness of their clothing. Soon there were two more children, Peter and Gertie.

Louisa's name is hardly remembered today, but she was the driving force of women's suffrage, and helped Australian women get the vote second in the world after New Zealand. It is a pity she is not a household name internationally, like Emmeline Pankhurst, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia Bloomer. The fact that Mrs Lawson did it from a position of grinding poverty and colonial isolation makes Louisa even more remarkable a human being. A lot of the famous suffregettes remain famous because they came from wealthy families, were wealthy intheir own right, or had wealthy husbands. Louisa Lawson was separated from her husband, and he was dirt poor as well anyway.

While on the subject of forgotten history, who today remembers Kate Sheppard, that New Zealand dynamo? All women who have ever voted owe that to her, possibly more than anyone.

All in the Almanac:

A world chronology of women’s suffrage

Early progressives in the Book of Days

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

I snagged the snap from Picture Australia, which I have only today discovered. It really does seem to be a good image site, as many only pretend to be.

"Looking for images of Australiana? PictureAustralia® is the place to start! Search for people, places and events in the collections of libraries, museums, galleries, archives, universities and other cultural agencies, in Australia and abroad - all at the same time. View the originals on the member agency web sites and order quality prints at your leisure."
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