Two Roses: Two Radical Hunter Valley Women: Rose Selwyn and Rose Scott
Edited version of talk and slide show given by Jude Conway
The Newcastle Family History Society, 7 June 2016
In 1973 C. E. Smith, the Newcastle City librarian and president of the Newcastle and Hunter District Historical Society, wrote that Rose Scott was one of the most famous women in Australian history. 1 In the late 19th and early 20th centuries she had been pivotal to many reforms for women, especially the granting of women’s suffrage. How many people know that Rose Scott spent the first eleven years of her life at Glendon estate near Singleton and her next 22 years in Newcastle? Which is why of course that C.E. Smith was proudly proclaiming her fame.
Rose Scott’s aunty, Rose Selwyn nee Rusden, was mainly known as the daughter and wife of Church of England ministers. But in the 1890s Mrs Selwyn was the president of the Newcastle branch of the Womanhood Suffrage League (WSL) which played its part in the fight for the vote for women. Who has heard of her?
This article discusses how the two Roses became radical, with emphasis on their time in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley. Firstly I need to introduce is the Rusden family. The parents were Reverend George Keylock and Anne Rusden, known for her ‘edifying’ conversations.2 Her letters suggest an ‘extensive vocabulary’, for example on being sent a lock of her granddaughter Rose Scott’s hair, Anne commented on Rose’s ‘extraordinary intrepidity in using the amputating instrument herself’.3
Rev. Rusden was an intellectual with an MA from Cambridge, a skilled mathematician and scholar of Asian languages, mythology and culture who conducted a school in Surry for over twenty years.4 The expiry of the school lease was the catalyst for the family deciding to emigrate to New South Wales. The family arrived in Sydney Cove on the first of May 1834, with a large library of good books and ten of their eleven children; their eldest son was already in the colony.5 Rev. Rusden accepted an invitation to become the first Church of England chaplain for the parish of Maitland.6
There is evidence that at least one of Rusden sons had been educated at the family school, probably all of them, but we do not know if the daughters were educated at school or at home.7 However the eldest daughter Saranna, aged 24 on arrival in the colony, had ‘a propensity for foreign languages, considerable skills in art and handicrafts and was a serious reader of history, geography, biography, orientalism and the classics.’8 Saranna’s youngest sister Rose Rusden was only nine years old when the family arrived. She used to accompany her father to the Maitland stockade when he visited the prisoners who were making the road from Maitland to Morpeth. Her sense of social justice surfaced early as she wonder what they’d done to be so terribly punished and felt sad ‘to hear the clanking of their chains’. Her youthful education included wandering in the bush collecting wild flowers and probably meeting Worimi people. It was very different from Saranna’s experience of growing up in Surrey.9
The second family of interest is the Scott family.
Robert and Helenus, sons of a distinguished Scottish research scientist and former president of the Medical Board of Bombay who was persuaded by Joseph Banks to emigrate to temperate Australia when his health failed. Dr Scott died on the voyage, and was buried at Cape Town but Robert and Helenus continued on to Sydney.10 In 1822 they obtained adjoining land grants on the Hunter River near Singleton. They amalgamated the land into a pastoral estate they called Glendon. They ran sheep, and were first thoroughbred horse breeders in the Hunter.11
In 1834 Robert and Helenus Scott were eager to visit the newly arrived Rusden family with six daughters, and by September the following year, Helenus and Saranna were happily married and ensconced in Glendon, alongside Robert. Saranna helped manage the estate with its numerous staff and assigned convicts.12
Saranna and Helenus Scott were a fertile combination. By 1847, Saranna was pregnant for the eighth time in ten years. A baby girl was born on 8 October and named Rose presumably after Saranna’s younger sister.13 The two Roses were to form a close bond that lasted a lifetime. Saranna Scott taught all her children to read before they were four years old and she wrote about little Rose’s enthusiasm in learning the alphabet. While the boys went on to boarding school, Rose and her sisters continued to be educated at home. As they sat with their needlework, Saranna would read Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott to them in her ‘beautiful voice’. Rose’s feminist sensibilities were apparent from age seven when she was ‘enraged’ by Petruchio’s forceful taming of the stubborn Kate. Also she never quite forgave the English for condoning the burning of her heroine, Joan of Arc.14
Rose Scott never knew her uncle Robert. A generous host to artists, explorers, clergy, scientists and wine growers, in a style that far exceeded their income.15 After his untimely death in 1844, three years before Rose was born, Helenus discovered the estate was in debt. Following a depression and the failure of the Bank of Australia, Helenus was declared bankrupt in 1848, a year after Rose’s birth.16 He took a paid position as an itinerant magistrate.17 While away he quizzically wrote to Saranna, ‘I hope you will not add another to your family’.18 With the stress of financial worries he had presumably forgotten his vital role in baby making.
With her mother so busy and her father frequently away, Rose Scott spent many hours exploring in the bush, content to be alone and listen to the music of the swamp oaks and the Hunter River gurgling over stones and pebbles. She developed an independent mind, always asking ‘how and why things were so, especially on questions relating to God, Aboriginal people and sexual relations’.19
The other Rose, Rose Rusden, was 25 when she became engaged to Arthur Selwyn MA, a candidate for the ministry. Letters from her fiancé in 1851, possibly written with rose-coloured glasses, give useful clues to her accomplishments. Arthur asserted that she was an ‘excellent classical scholar’, that she wrote poetry and taught in the school.20 If not at the time, certainly later in life Rose was a keen exponent of chess.21 The couple married in East Maitland in 1852, and after her husband had been ordained a Church of England minister, Rev. Arthur and Rose Selwyn were sent to Grafton parish, sailing there on a small schooner.22 Rose Selwyn, had always loved watercolour painting and sketching, reputedly given lessons by Conrad Martens. She continued to paint after her marriage and her artworks, produced for her relatives, are now valued for their historical representations, rather than their brilliance and a large collection is held at the Clarence River District Historical Society in Grafton.23
Back to the Scott family. Because of her frequent childbearing, ‘responsibilities as mistress of Glendon’ and on-going financial troubles, Saranna had a nervous breakdown; so in April 1857 nine-year old Rose was sent to live with the Selwyns in Grafton for eighteen months.24
The couple, who never had children of their own, became devoted to their bright young niece and continued her education.25 They introduced her to the Bundjalung people who were camped close to their Grafton home. Rose Scott thought they were loving and kindly, and all her life treasured a dilly bag they wove for her from strips of kurrajong bark.26
(Rose’s late uncle Robert Scott did not have such warm feelings for the original owners of the land. He lost his appointment as an occasional magistrate for his ‘injudicious and somewhat arrogant defence of the Myall Creek murderers’ of up to 30 Wirrayaraay people on Henry Dangar’s Inverell property in 1838.)27
Because of the bankruptcy, the Scotts were forced to sell Glendon and most of their property. Saranna’s mother Anne Rusden realised that they would not be able to keep their piano, but thought their books would be safe. However the final auction in 1858 listed what Saranna ‘prized most of all’, their collection of 1,000 books.28
After taking a permanent position as police magistrate in Newcastle Helenus Scott, his family and little Rose, now eleven, were reunited in the city for Christmas 1858. The home allocated for the magistrate was the former commandants cottage in the old barracks grounds off Newcomen Street, now commonly known as the James Fletcher site.29
How did Rose Scott fill her time in Newcastle? Although a private school for young ladies was only a block away, Rose was still not sent to school.30 An older sister listed their daily activities as riding, going to church, walking, evening reading and visiting with women friends.31 All very upper middle-class and innocuous. Although they had servants the Scott girls relieved their mother of domestic burdens and made their own dresses.32
Rose spent time with her older cousins, Harriet and Helena Scott who were living on Ash Island. On their ‘rambles’ on the island it is easy to imagine her collecting wild flowers with her cousins who were becoming renowned wildlife illustrators.33 Rose became such close friends with Helena that she was the legal witness to her wedding.34
Rose and her sisters would visit Sydney in the company of various relatives, Scotts, Mitchells or Merewethers, who regularly made the journey by steamship. She spent time in both Sydney and Newcastle with her beloved cousin David Scott Mitchell, eleven years her senior, who was the benefactor of the Mitchell Library. David recommended authors she should read and they discussed the books. Rose also had extended stays with some of her intellectual Rusden relatives who had moved to Melbourne.35
What contributed to the expansion of Rose’s feminist views? Her biographer Judith Allen wrote that the magisterial papers of Rose’s father Helenus ‘dramatise[d] the vulnerabilities of women within sexual relationships’ with feminist empathy. Allen surmised that in family discussions he may have mentioned some of his cases on illegitimacy, desertion, domestic violence and sexual assaults, and therefore Rose’s knowledge of ‘the circumstances of women considerably less fortunate than her female relatives may well have been formative’.36
Another impact on Rose which her biographer did not seem to be aware of, was the establishment in 1867 of an Industrial School for Girls in the Barracks grounds, adjacent to the Scott residence. The institution was for girls ‘deemed to be unable to function in the main school system because of their family situation or delinquency’ or who were considered at risk of prostitution. The historian of the Barracks domain, Ann Hardy, said that the girls were often treated like criminals. Consequently they started rioting, and one of their riots, in May 1868, was so wild that ‘neither the staff nor the police were able to effectively manage the girls behaviour …’37
Rose Scott, now aged twenty, did spend time in other cities, but at the very least she would have heard about the riots, and may well have been at home when one erupted. Historian of the Industrial School, Jane Ison, has noted that Helenus, as the police magistrate and living within the school grounds, was ‘closely involved with some of the staff and inmates’ both ‘professionally and domestically’. The girls were employed as servants in the Scott household and Rose would have talked with them and they may have acquainted her with a different side of life.38
In 1867 Rose’s aunty, Rose Selwyn, moved to Newcastle when Reverend Selwyn was appointed to the diocese.39 They lived in the parsonage on the corner of the Barracks block (the corner of Church and Newcomen Streets) and would have shared many church and social activities with the Scotts. They also shared a connection with the Industrial School.
Jane Ison acquainted me with the fact that one of the school inmates, Elizabeth Morgan, who had been in the first riot in 1868, was recommended to Mrs. Selwyn as a domestic servant by the school superintendent. The Selwyns gave Elizabeth a chance and she worked with them for 18 months before she was married, by Rev Selwyn of course.40 Rose Selwyn also arranged domestic service for a number of Industrial School girls with families in the Hunter Valley.41 The two Roses’ close knowledge of these girls’ situation and behaviour could have been grist to the mill for their growing feminist ideals.
In the 1870s both Rose Scott and Rose Selwyn were concentrating on philanthropic work, the term ‘do-gooders’ springs to mind. The younger Rose taught Sunday school, visited patients at the hospital and so eagerly collected money for the Widows and Orphans fund with a Miss Parnell, they were advised to not to collect too much.42 Her aunty Rose Selwyn was vice-president of Newcastle Relief Society which made ‘unostentatious efforts to afford relief and comfort to the needy and distressed’.43
The following decade was one of change. In 1880, after Helenus’s death the previous year, and presumably the loss of their home which was allocated for the magistrate, Rose Scott and her mother Saranna bought a house in Jersey Road in Woollahra and moved to Sydney.44 Rose began volunteering with the recently established Church of England Girls’ Friendly Society (GFS) which in the spirit of Caroline Chisholm, met unaccompanied young immigrant women as they disembarked, helping find them suitable employment to prevent a ‘lapse into vice’. In Newcastle in 1882 Rose Selwyn attended a meeting to establish a GFS branch in connection with Sydney. Rose Scott and Rose Selwyn were soon liaising in finding positions for girls with respectable families.45
In the metropolis Rose Scott began expanding her mind. She was one of the inaugural founder of the Women’s Literary Society in 1889.46 The Society did not just discuss books but also topics, like ‘Suggestions for the improvement of affairs as regards wage-earning women’. Rose argued that doing away with class distinctions would help.47 Her understanding of how to solve social problems had broadened beyond benevolence, which Scott now likened ‘to cutting the heads off weeds without digging out and destroying their roots.’48
She often visited her now mainly reclusive cousin David Scott Mitchell and after reading his rare Australian copy of J.S. Mill’s The Subjection of Women she needed no further convincing that women should have the vote.49
Some of the members of the Literary Society, including Rose, formed the ground-breaking Womanhood Suffrage League in 1891, with former Hexham resident Mary Windeyer nee Bolton, as president and Rose Scott as secretary. When unable to attend a meeting, Mary insisted that ‘Miss Scott’ take her place. Rose did, and found to her surprise that she had the ability and confidence to be an effective public speaker.50
Saranna, Rose Scott’s well-read mother, remained opposed to women voting, presumably she felt it was not women’s sphere.51 However Rose Selwyn, unlike her older sister, wholeheartedly supported her niece’s ‘stance on the suffrage cause’, as well as the raising of the age of consent for girls from 14 years. Rose Selwyn wrote to her niece about the shameful treatment of young girls in Newcastle: a man invited his friends to celebrate ‘his having ruined his hundredth girl’ and ‘a child of 13 or 14’ was made pregnant by a pupil teacher – the child had to leave school while ‘the wretch went on teaching’ Rose Selwyn ‘concerns were unpopular in her social circle ñ others would rather turn a blind eye’. It would have helped to be able to pour out her heart out to her niece.52
From Sydney Rose Scott organised for a noted feminist Maybanke Anderson to stay with the Selwyns on a trip to Newcastle to talk about women’s suffrage at the School of Arts on 13 July 1894. Maybanke wrote afterwards, ‘The dean is with us to some extent but thinks every married woman should give her vote to her husband.’ Arthur, now Dean Selwyn, thought otherwise there might be discord in a family.53 Rose Selwyn became adept at being a respectable minister’s wife while quietly lobbying politicians and senior clergy on votes for women.54 She accepted the presidency of the Newcastle league at its first meeting in July 1894.55
To dispel any notions that it was an easy path for Australian women to gain the vote, the Newcastle Morning Herald ‘Political Points’ columnist, for example, ridiculed the cause: ‘Several branches of the Womanhood Suffrage League are seeking to gain the weak-minded to support their insane cry’.56 This sarcastic attitude was not uncommon in the media.
In 1895 Rose Selwyn delivered what was probably her first ever public lecture, ‘Should Women Be Jurors?’ She argued what now seems so obvious, that women standing trial in court should not just be ‘judged according to men’s experience’ while the ‘special insights to be gained from women’s experience’ were not admitted.57 Breaking the tradition women did not speak on a public platform was not easy, shown by the 1895 AGM of the Suffrage League when out of the five guest speakers, only one was a female.58
But growing in confidence in 1897 Rose Selwyn, as League president, gave a lengthy paper on ‘The Peculiar Fitness of Women to Help in Government, as evidenced by the Bible and History.’ Her talk contained quotes from theologians, social thinker John Ruskin and the British suffrage campaigner Millicent Fawcett and was described by the League secretary as an ‘intellectual treat’.59 It also displayed her Rusden family’s propensity for serious reading and intellectual analysis.
In 1896 Saranna Scott died, after the eventful life of any immigrant settler. Although she did not support advocacy for ‘women’s rights’, her daughter Rose attributed Saranna’s example and teachings as one of her inspirations to work for women.
Rose Scott travelled up to Newcastle in 1898 to speak on a different issue, against the proposed federation, alongside William. J. Lyne, M.P., and John Brown, coal mine owner.
Rose was nervous about addressing the large crowd from the balcony of the Crown and Anchor Hotel in Hunter Street.60 ‘I almost felt as if I could not speak “for I hate drink” and then when I saw the sea of earnest faces and heard them saying “we want the lady, is that miss Scott?” I felt as if I could do anything’. Describing herself as an old Novocastrian she claimed their indulgence as she was unaccustomed to outdoor speaking. She told them accept nothing from the politicians but more freedom and that, from a woman’s point of view the bill contained too little recognition of their rights. When it was all over, she said, ‘I had the men and boys I used to know in the hospital and teach in the Sunday School grown out of all recognition and coming to me and shaking hands and holding my hand in theirs as though they would never let it go – that part of it was perfect’.61
Rose Selwyn’s husband Arthur died in 1899 so she had to move out of the parsonage. She stayed for a time with her Wallace relatives at Rohallion in Church street Newcastle, then moved to Sydney to join her niece Rose Scott’s household in Woollahra.62 Rose Selwyn lived long enough to see women’s vote become a reality both federally and in NSW in 1902. Rose Scott probably held a party, though as a teetotaller she would not have toasted the win with champagne.
Rose Selwyn died at 81 years of age at her niece’s residence on 7 August 1905.63 Hearing of her death Bishop Stretch in Newcastle astutely noted in his sermon that ‘There were often records of men’s work and activities but not those of women’. Then, ignoring her public roles in the GFS, the Relief Society and the Suffrage League, all he mentioned were her ‘gentle but firm ordering of that woman’s empire’, the home, and ‘her gracious hospitality’.64 In newspaper obituaries Rose Selwyn was overshadowed by her male relatives. The Sydney Morning Herald wrote: ‘There died last week a lady whose career as the wife of one of our pioneer Anglican clergymen demands to be written.’ The reader learn’t that she was the daughter of Rev. Rusden and lengthy details about her husband Dean Selwyn’s career. The Maitland Daily Mercury at least mentioned her church work.65
Rose Selwyn’s remains were taken to Newcastle by train, then to Christ Church which was now a cathedral. In the funeral service Bishop Stretch reiterated that she was a good, kind and loving woman, which undoubtedly she was, but Rose Scott and local suffragists could have added much more. Rose Selwyn was buried in Sandgate cemetery alongside her husband.66
The never-married Rose Scott’s influential feminist campaigning was well publicised. Besides suffrage, she ‘successfully advocated for a separate prison for women; helped organise a Tailoresses’ Union; was a key adviser for an 1899 Act giving early closing for shops and factories; advocated for the Children’s Protection Act of 1892, the Custody of Children Act of 1894, the State Relief Act of 1901, the Neglected Children and Juvenile Offenders Act of 1905; supported the establishment of a children’s court, and much more, easily found on the internet and in articles and books.67 When Scott died on 20 April 1925, obituaries, editorials, memorials and poems were written in newspapers all over Australia about ‘her noble life’.68 Surprisingly there was no obituary in the Newcastle Morning Herald.
Her links with Newcastle have been mainly forgotten, not helped by her Australian Dictionary of Biography entry, where the fact that Rose lived in the city for twenty-two years is not included.69 Rose Selwyn did have Rose Street in former glebe land in Merewether named after her.70 I would like to see both Roses, Rose Selwyn and Rose Scott, more widely honoured in our city. The talk to the Newcastle Family History Society and this web posting are small tributes of remembrance to these two brilliant radical women.
Jude Conway
May 2017
1 C.E. Smith, ‘E.C. Merewetherís Family Background’ Newcastle and Hunter District Historical Society Bulletin, Vol 1 Nos 5-6, September-December 1973, 65-91, 66.
2 Leaflet entitled ‘To the much respected memory of Mrs Rusden’, (date of death 23 April 1860), in the Rusden Family papers, Newcastle Local Studies Library.
3 Allen, Judith A. Rose Scott: Vision and Revision in Feminism. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994, 46.
4 Allen, Rose Scott, 34; Waddell, James. A History of St Peters Church East Maitland NSW Kelso, Qld.: J.G. Waddell, 1996, 29.
5 Sydney Herald, ‘Shipping Intelligence: Arrivals’ 5 May 1834, 2; Sunday Times, ‘Prominent Women of Today’, 19 January 1908, 10; Smith, C. E. ‘Pioneer Priest of St Peters’, Maitland Mercury, 12 April 1967; Waddell, 29.
6 Smith, ‘Pioneer Priest of St Peters’.
7 Selleck, R. J. W. ‘Rusden, George William (1819-1903)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35871.
8 Allen, Rose Scott, 34.
9 Selwyn, R. E. Address to the Girls Friendly Society, East Maitland, Maitland: T. Dimmock, 1888.
10 Allen, Rose Scott, 35.
11 Australian Heritage Database, ‘Glendon Homestead and Sites of Outbuildings, Glendon Rd, Glendon via Singleton, NSW, Australia’ http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/ahdb/search.pl?mode=place_detail;place_id=1403, (accessed 16/6/14). I pointed out at the talk that contrary to claims in the occasional letter to the Newcastle Herald, horse studs began in the Hunter Valley before coal mining.
12 Allen, Rose Scott, 37-38, 41; Sydney Monitor, 9 September 1835, 3.
13 Judith Allen, ‘Scott, Rose (1847ñ1925)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/scott-rose-8370; Jane Ison, ‘Helenus Scott’, The Newcastle Industrial School for Girls, http://nis.wikidot.com/scott.
14 Miles Franklin, ‘Rose Scott: Some Aspects of her personality and Work’ in Flora Eldershaw (ed). The Peaceful Army: A memorial to the Pioneer Women of Australia 1788-1938, 90-107. Sydney: Women’s Executive Committee and Advisory Council of Australia’s 150th Anniversary Celebrations, 1938; ‘Miss Rose Scott’s Book of Memories’, The Sun 27 January 1924; Allen, Rose Scott, 44.
15 Gray, Nancy ‘Scott, Robert (1799-1844)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/scott-robert-2642 and ‘Scott, Helenus (1802-1879), Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/scott-helenus-2851; Allen, Rose Scott, page 40 cites May Munro, Passionately in Earnest, National Library manuscript.
16 C. E. Smith The Valley Scotts, Newcastle Morning Herald (NMH) 18 March 1967, 7.
17 Ibid, 8.
18 Allen, Rose Scott, 41 cites letter from Helenus Scott to his wife dated March 1848.
19 Ibid, 44; ‘Rose Scott’s Career’ Sunday Times, 17 April 1921.
20 Rose Selwyn compiled Letters of the late Dean Selwyn (of Newcastle) chiefly to his wife, Sydney: Angus & Robertson 1902, preface, 99, 75, 53. The reference to school probably means Sunday school e.g. in Waddell, A History of St Peters Church page 38 ‘All children, of every degree, attended the Sunday school conducted by Rev. Rusden and his daughters.’
21 Letter from J. W. Hester (President of Stockton School of Arts Chess Club) to Arthur Selwyn, 3 May 1895, Selwyn Family papers, Mitchell Library.
22 Letters of the late Dean Selwyn, preface; John Moorhead, Cathedral on the Clarence: the first hundred years, Grafton: Cathedral Restoration Committee, 1984, 7.
23 ‘Rose Elizabeth Selwyn’, Design & Art Australia Online, http://www.daao.org.au/bio/rose-elizabeth-selwyn/references/.
24 Allen 41, 48.
25 Ibid.
26 Franklin, Rose Scott, 92; ‘Miss Rose Scott’s Book of Memories’.
27 Nancy Gray, ‘Scott, Robert (1799-1844)’, ADB, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/scott-robert-2642; Julie McIntyre and Jude Conway, ‘Intimate, imperial, intergenerational: How settler women’s mobilities feminised Newcastle and the Hunter Valley’, Journal of Australian Colonial History, Vol. 19, 2017 or 2018.
28 Allen, Rose Scott, 42, 49; C. E. Smith ‘The Valley Scotts’, NMH, 18 March 1967.
29 Allen, Rose Scott, 43, 48-9.
30 Information about the school from Noeline Williamson (later Kyle) ‘Last century’s females in search of learning’, Newcastle Herald Midweek, 9 December 1981, 5.
31 Allen cites a letter written in 1867 by Rose’s sister Augusta, in Rose Scott, 53.
32 Ibid, 49.
33 Nancy Gray,’Foreword’ in Marion Ord (ed.), Historical Drawings of Moths and Butterflies: Harriet and Helena Scott, Sydney: Craftsman House, 1988, 9.
34 Allen, Rose Scott, 37.
35 Ibid 49, 56, 53; Gray, ‘Foreword’, 9.
36 Allen, Rose Scott, 51-52.
37 Ann Hardy, ‘…here is an Asylum open..’: Constructing a Culture of Government Care in Australia 1801-2013. Ph.D. diss., University of Newcastle, NSW, 2013, 71, 76.
38 Jane Ison, ‘Helenus Scott’, Newcastle Industrial School for Girls, http://nis.wikidot.com/scott.
39 Davis, Rex. ‘Selwyn, Arthur Edward (1823-1899)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/selwyn-arthur-edward-4557.
40 Conversation 9 June 2015; Ison, ‘Elizabeth Morgan’, http://nis.wikidot.com/morgan.
41 Newcastle Parsonage note, 5 April 1871, Colonial Secretary’s In-Letters (CSIL): 71/2542 [1/2159].
42 Allen, Rose Scott, 164; Letters of the late Dean Selwyn, 224 – to Rose Selwyn, 15 September 1874.
43 ‘Newcastle Relief Society’, Newcastle Chronicle, 23 March 1872, 2.
44 Allen, Rose Scott, 52, 54; ‘Rose Scott’, http://www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au/library/local_history/woollahra_plaque_scheme/past_winners_and_shortlisted/rose_scott.
45 Allen, Rose Scott, 75, 85, 97; Peter Johnson, G.F.S. Its Story: A History of the Girls’ Friendly Society in Australia, Girls’ Friendly Society Australia, 1975, 22; ‘Girls’ Friendly Society’, NMH, 11 July 1882, 2.
46 Zora Cross, ‘Pioneer In Fight For Woman’s Suffrage: Achievements of Rose Scott’, Argus, 20 February 1937, 20.
47 Jan Roberts, Maybanke Anderson: Sex, suffrage & social reform, Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1993, 63.
48 Allen, Rose Scott, 83.
49 ‘David Scott Mitchell Library’, State Library of NSW, http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/research-and-collections-about-our-collections/david-scott-mitchell-library; Ethel M. Nall, ‘Men’s [sic] Suffrage in the Antipodes: A Glimpse of Rose Scott’ The Queen, The Lady’s Newspaper, 14 December 1901.
50 Franklin, Rose Scott, 93.
51 Allen, Rose Scott, 98.
52 Ibid, 97.
53 Roberts, Maybanke Anderson, 81.
54 Allen, Rose Scott, 97.
55 ‘Women’s Suffrage’, NMH, 23 July 1894, 5.
56 ‘Political Points’, NMH, 29 June 1894, 5.
57 Allen, Rose Scott, 97, referring to the Selwyn Family papers at the Mitchell Library.
58 ‘Womanhood Suffrage League’, NMH, 22 October 1895, 5.
59 ‘Womanhood Suffrage League: A Paper By Mrs. Selwyn’, NMH, 2 July 1897, 3.
60 An audience member mentioned after my talk that it was common at that time for people to address crowds from hotel verandas. Yes it was – for men, but not for women.
61 Allen, Rose Scott, 164.
62 Letter from Rose Selwyn to a Mr Walker, 18 June 1900, Selwyn Family papers, Series 02: Rose Elizabeth Selwyn, Mitchell Library; Allen, Rose Scott, 138.
63 ‘Death of Mrs. Selwyn’, Maitland Daily Mercury, 8 August 1905, 2.
64 ‘The Late Mrs Selwyn’, NMH, 14 August 1905, 6.
65 ‘Obituary: Mrs Rose Selwyn: Relict of Canon Selwyn’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 August 1905, 29; ‘Death of Mrs. Selwyn’, Maitland Daily Mercury.
66 ‘Funeral of Mrs. Selwyn’, NMH, 10 August 1905, 4
67 ‘Rose Scott’, Woollahra Library, http://www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au/library/local_history/woollahra_plaque_scheme/past_winners_and_shortlisted/rose_scott.
68 In the two months after her death, the number of newspaper articles and pieces about Rose Scott number 51 in NSW, 31 in Queensland, 6 in Victoria, 5 in South Australia, 3 in Western Australia and 1 in Tasmania (Trove). One example is ‘Notable Woman: Death of Miss Rose Scott’, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 April 1925, 14.
69 Judith Allen, ‘Scott, Rose (1847-1925)’.
70 J. Dixon, History of Merewether, Merewether Municipal Council, 1935, 67-68.