Rose Scott

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Rose Scott (8 October 1847 – 20 April 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 .

She was born at Glendon, New South Wales. Her father, Helenus Scott, born in 1802, came to Australia in 1821, took up land and became well-known as a breeder of cattle and horses. Losing his money in a depression some 20 years later, he joined the government service and became a police magistrate. He died in 1879. Her mother, Sarah Anne Rusden, was a daughter of the Rev. G. K. Rusden and sister of George William Rusden, the historian. Another relative was her cousin David Scott Mitchell, the son of her father's sister.

Rose 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 these meetings, 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. Speaking at committee meetings gave her confidence, and she eventually became a witty and accomplished public speaker. Her mother died in 1896, and Scott was left with a home and sufficient income for her needs. Her interest in votes for women led to much study of the position of women in the community, and she found that young girls were working in shops from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on ordinary days, and until 11 p.m. on Saturdays. Some of these girls were asked to come to her house on Sundays and describe the conditions in which they worked, and there leading politicians such as Bernhard Ringrose Wise, William Holman, W. M. Hughes and Thomas Bavin met and discussed the drafting of the bill that eventually became the early closing act of 1899.

Other reforms advocated, and eventually implemented, were the appointment of matrons at police stations and of women inspectors in factories and shops, and improvements in the conditions of women prisoners. This entailed an immense amount of correspondence, all written in Scott's own hand. 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 also, for many years, international secretary of the national council of women in New South Wales. When she retired in 1921, a presentation of money was made to her which she used to found a prize for female law students at the university. Another subscription was made to have her portrait painted by John Longstaff. This now hangs in the art gallery at Sydney. She died after a painful illness, borne with courage, on 20 April 1925.

Scott was opposed to federation and conscription.

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This article incorporates text from the public domain 1949 edition of Dictionary of Australian Biography from
Project Gutenberg of Australia, which is in the public domain in Australia and the United States of America.
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