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On this
picture above you can see the bust of Mary Lee in Adelaide,
South Australia. She was the Secretary and leader of Woman’s
Suffrage League of South Australia. Mary Lee was born on 14
February 1821 in the county of Monahan in Ireland. She was born
Walsh, in 1844 she married George Lee. They had together seven
children. She immigrated in Adelaide when her son Ben, who moved
in Adelaide, fell sick in 1879. She came in Adelaide with her
daughter Evelyn and travelled on the steamship “Orient”. In
November 1880 Ben died. As she didn’t has enough money for their
return ticket Mary Lee and Evelyn decided to stay in Australia.
In 1883 Mary Lee joined the ladies committee of the Social
Purity Society and 1885 she was the ladies’ secretary. Mary Lee
proposed during a public meeting in December 1889, to form a
women’s trade union and in 1890 The Women’s Trades Union has
been founded. Mary Lee was nominated in 1895 at the age of
seventy-four to stand for the United Labor Party for the
parliament but has been declined. Mary was appointed the first
official visitor and also first woman to the Lunatic Asylums in
1896. Mary Lee fought for the women’s right and it was only
fifty years after her death that the first South Australian
women were elected at the parliament. Mary lee died from
pleurisy and influenza in 1909 and she was buried in the same
grave of her son Ben. In December 1994 a bust was unveiled on
North Terrace for her successful fight to obtain woman right to
vote. |
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