Sarah Fanny Gadsby enrols to vote -1902

Some family history files had become corrupted so I was redoing a search for my great great uncle and aunt’s records.  Sarah and Henry Gadsby lived in an inner city area of Sydney after marrying in 1881.  Normally I don’t bother too much with Electoral rolls but this time I was checking an address. 

Sarah Fanny Gadsby’s electoral roll for the Federal seat of Phillip 1903-4 

Sarah Fanny Gadsby’s electoral roll for the Federal seat of Phillip 1903-4  seemed to be missing her husband Henry Gadsby.  I did a double check and found all the names listed were female.  When did women get the vote in Australia? It seems this was a momentous roll for females of this Sydney electorate for in April  1902 The Franchise  Act was passed. 

“There was an unusual degree of animation in the vicinity of the Senate Chamber this afternoon. The Franchise Bill, which proposes to give a uniform adult suffrage throughout the Commonwealth for all elections for the Federal Parliament, was down for the second reading and attracted a large number of ladies, who thronged the galleries.” Sydney Morning Herald, 10 April 1902, p.7 

All the usual doom that accompanies social change was predicted in Parliament.    

“The old question of extending the franchise to women was under discussion, and the familiar platitudes about "invading the sanctity of the home", "the rupture of family life", "the dulling of the gloss of gentle womanhood" and other rotund phrases”  The Age, 10 April 1902, p. 5 

Ten years after their NZ counterparts and 16 years earlier than their UK relatives, Australian women over 21 were allowed to  vote in Federal Elections and Referendums.  It would be some years later that women could sit in Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council seats. The first female to be elected in the NSW Legislative Assembly occurred in 1925.

Another look at the record points to a battle to be fought  nearly 80 years later. Nearly every female on the list had the occupation “domestic duties” having  given up their employment upon marriage.

A common occupation was "domestic duties"