Rose Scott
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Rose Scott (October 8, 1847 - April 20, 1925) was an Australian women's rights activist who protested for women's and universal suffrage in New South Wales at the turn-of-the twentieth century .
Rose Scott was born at Glendon, New South Wales, she and her sister Augusta were educated at home by their mother while her brothers attended boarding school. When her father died in 1879 she received a yearly allowance, and in 1880 after her sister died she adopted her son and moved to Sydney. She never married, devoting her life to the women's movement.
In 1882 Scott began to hold a weekly salon in her Sydney home, through this meeting she became well known amongst politicians, judges, philanthropists, writers and poets. In 1889 she helped to found the Women's Literary Society, which later grew into the Womanhood Suffrage League. Through the league she took part in lectures and debates for women's suffrage, until the Women's Suffrage Act was passed in 1902 in New South Wales.
She became the First President of the Women's Political Education League in 1902, a position she held until 1910. The league established branches throughout the state and consistently campaigned for the issue closest to Scott's heart: raising the age of consent to 16, achieved in 1910 with the Crimes (Girls' Protection) Act. She was also President of the Sydney Branch of the Peace Society in 1908. Other post-suffrage feminist reform campaigns she participated in included the Family Maintenance and Guardianship of Infants (1916), Women's Legal Status (1918) and First Offenders (Women) 1918 Acts.
She was opposed to federation and conscription.
[edit] References
- National Library of Australia. Scott, Rose (1847-1925). The National Library of Australia's Federation Gatway
- State Library of New South Wales. Papers of the Scott family, 1777–1925 (ML MSS 38)
