Henrietta Dugdale

Henrietta Augusta Dugdale (1827 - 1918) was a pioneer suffragist and radical in the Australian state of Victoria.

She was born in London. Married at age 14 to a man named Davies, she and her husband moved to Melbourne. Following his death in 1859, she married William Dugdale and they had two children.

From 1869 she was involved in women's rights. A letter she wrote endorsing the franchise of women was published in "The Argus", and this was the first occasion that an Australian woman discussed suffrage in a public forum. She wrote the utopian booklet "A Few Hours in a Far Off Age", published in 1883.

In 1884 she and Annie Lowe founded the Victorian Woman’s Suffrage Society, and she became president. In addition to her involvement in women's rights she was also a member of the Eclectics, a group devoted to discussion on controversial subjects, and the Australian Secular Association. She publicly attacked the monarchy and Christianity as a "despotism formed by men to humiliate women".

In 1903 she married her third husband, Fredrick Johnson. She died in 1918, at the age of 91.

A street in the Canberra suburb of Cook is named in her honour.

References

* [http://www.women.vic.gov.au/web12/rwpgslib.nsf/Graphic+Files/2001_Honour_Roll/$file/2001_Honour_Roll.pdf Henrietta Dugdale] , Centenary of Federation Victoria, 2001.