Julia Margaret Guerin Halloran Lavender (23 April 1858 in

Williamstown, Victoria Williamstown is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south-west of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Hobsons Bay local government area. Williamstown recorded a population of 14,407 at the 2021 census. H ...

– 26 July 1923 in

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

), known popularly as Bella Guerin, was an Australian feminist, women's activist, women's suffragist, anti-conscriptionist, political activist and schoolteacher.

Early life

Guerin was born on 23 April 1858 in

. She was the daughter of Julia Margaret (née Kearney) and Patrick Guerin; her parents were both born in Ireland. Her father worked as a penal sergeant and rose to the rank of governor of gaols. Having studied at home to pass matriculation in 1878, Bella became the first woman to graduate from an Australian university when she gained her B.A. from the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...

in December 1883, becoming M.A. upon application in 1885.

Career

Teaching

She taught first at Loreto College, Victoria, urging higher education scholarships for Catholic girls to produce 'a band of noble thoughtful women as a powerful influence for good'. She married civil servant and poet

Henry Halloran Henry Ferdinand Halloran (9 August 1869 – 22 October 1953) was a major property owner and developer in New South Wales in the early part of the twentieth century. Halloran was born in Sydney, his father was a bank clerk and architect named Edw ...

at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne, on 29 June 1891. Halloran, then aged 80, had addressed a laudatory poem to her after seeing a graduation portrait in 1884. He died in Sydney on 19 May 1893, leaving her with an infant son, Henry Marco. A second marriage at Christ Church, St Kilda,

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

on 1 October 1909 to George D'Arcie Lavender, thirty years her junior, was apparently short lived. Returning to teaching from financial necessity, Bella taught in Sydney, then Carlton, Prahran and East Melbourne. From the mid-1890s she frequented suffragist circles, becoming office-bearer in the Bendigo Women's Franchise League while running University College, Bendigo from 1898 - 1903. From 1904 to 1917 she taught at Camperdown and in a succession of small

schools at

South Yarra South Yarra is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 4 km south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the Cities of Melbourne and Stonnington local government areas. South Yarra recorded a popul ...

, St Kilda, Parkville and Brunswick with diminishing success. Her increasing political activity and disputes over conditions with the Education Department probably contributed to this outcome.

Women's Political Association

As vice-president of the Women's Political Association in 1912 - 1914 Guerin co-authored

Vida Goldstein Vida Jane Mary Goldstein (pron. ) (13 April 186915 August 1949) was an Australian suffragist and social reformer. She was one of four female candidates at the 1903 federal election, the first at which women were eligible to stand. Goldstein wa ...

's 1913 Senate election pamphlet, but dual membership of non-party feminist and Labor Party organizations proved untenable. From 1914 she wrote and spoke for the Labor and Victorian Socialist parties and the Women's League of Socialists, and was recognized as a 'witty, cogent and instructive' commentator on a range of controversial social issues; they included the rights of illegitimate children, "brotherhood and sisterhood without sex distinction" and defence of English militant suffragettes.

Anti-war

An ardent anti-war propagandist, she led the Labor Women's Anti-Conscription Fellowship campaign during the 1916 referendum and spoke in Adelaide, Broken Hill and Victorian metropolitan and country centres against militarism and in defence of rights of assembly and free speech.

Politics

Appointed vice-president of the

Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms the f ...

's Women's Central Organizing Committee in March 1918, she aroused censure and controversy for describing Labor women as "performing poodles and packhorses", under-represented in policy decisions and relegated to auxiliary fund raising roles. Henceforth she organized for Labor "only so far as it stands for those principles represented by the Red Flag", believing in the parliamentary system but desiring capitalism's elimination.

Religion

In religion she moved from

Roman Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...

rationalism In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy' ...

. She described her political evolution as from "Imperialistic butterfly" to "democratic grub" and experienced continual tensions as a socialist feminist within the Labor Party.

Personal life

Her son, who practised as a doctor in Adelaide from 1915, described her as "the kindest and most gentle of women"; she saw herself as a "national idealist" and an "incorrigible militant", promoting women's participation in public life. She was regarded as an orator of "unique talents". She died in Adelaide on 26 July 1923 of

cirrhosis of the liver Cirrhosis, also known as liver cirrhosis or hepatic cirrhosis, and end-stage liver disease, is the impaired liver function caused by the formation of scar tissue known as fibrosis due to damage caused by liver disease. Damage causes tissue repai ...

, aged 65, and was buried in the Catholic cemetery at West Terrace.

Legacy

Being that Bella Guerin spent time teaching in Ballarat, the

University of Ballarat The University of Ballarat, Australia was a dual-sector university with multiple campuses in Victoria, Australia, including its main Ballarat campus, Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide that were authorized by the university to provide diploma, unde ...

(now known as

Federation University Australia Federation University Australia (Fed Uni) is a public, multi-sector university based in Ballarat in Victoria, Australia. The university also has campuses in Ararat, Horsham, Stawell, Churchill, Berwick, and Brisbane, as well as online techni ...

) honoured her by naming one of the two Mt Helen campus'

Halls of Residence A dormitory (originated from the Latin word ''dormitorium'', often abbreviated to dorm) is a building primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people such as boarding school, high school, college or university s ...

after her (the other being named after

Peter Lalor Peter Fintan Lalor (; 5 February 1827 – 9 February 1889) was an Irish-Australian rebel and, later, politician who rose to fame for his leading role in the Eureka Rebellion, an event identified with the "birth of democracy" in Australia. ...

, who led the Eureka Stockade in Ballarat) Guerin Place in the Canberra suburb of Chisholm is named in her honour.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Guerin, Bella 1858 births 1923 deaths 19th-century Australian women Australian feminists Australian people of Irish descent Australian Roman Catholics Australian schoolteachers Australian socialists Australian socialist feminists Australian suffragists Australian women of World War I Deaths from cirrhosis Non-interventionism People from Adelaide People from Ballarat University of Melbourne alumni University of Melbourne women People from Williamstown, Victoria