Bella Guerin

Julia Margaret Guerin Halloran Lavender (23 April 1858 — 26 July 1923), known popularly as Bella Guerin, was an Australian feminist, women's rights activist, women's suffragist, anti-conscriptionist, political activist, and schoolteacher.

In December 1883, she was the first woman to graduate from an Australian University, when she graduated B.A. at the University of Melbourne.

Family

Julia Margaret Guerin, known as "Bella" was born at Williamstown, Victoria on 23 April 1858. She was the daughter of Julia Marguerite Guerin (1835–1890), née Kearney, and Patrick Guerin (1835–1893), sometimes "Guérin"; both of whom were Irish Catholic immigrants. Her father worked in the penal system, serving as Governor of Ballarat Gaol (1881–1891). She had an older brother, Marco Guerin (1855–1929), who was born on her family's way to Australia in the Marco Polo (thus, "Marco").

She married the former civil servant and poet Henry Halloran (1811–1893), C.M.G. at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne, on 29 June 1891. Guerin was 33; Halloran was 80. In 1884, Halloran had addressed a "laudatory poem" to Bella, after seeing her graduation portrait. Halloran died in Sydney on 19 May 1893, leaving Bella with their son, Henry Marco James Halloran (1892–1981), just 5 months old.

She married her second husband, George D'Arcie Lavender (1887–1961), thirty years her junior, at Christ Church, St Kilda, Melbourne on 1 October 1909. The marriage was apparently short lived; and, at the time of his enlistment in the First AIF, at Adelaide on 14 April 1916, Lavender officially declared that he was not married, and that his next of kin was his sister, Mrs. Clara Rowson, of Bendigo.

Education

"Educated by her mother, who had had the advantage of many years' schooling in France and Belgium, Mrs. Lavender was a brilliant scholarly woman, and spoke French as fluently and wittily as her mother tongue, and she was very proud of her University Degree, won in the "dark ages", when brainy woman were regarded as undesirable blue stockings, and their presence at the University was frowned upon. She was a writer, and her efforts in the press and on the platform helped in a great measure to secure the suffrage for women." Table Talk, 2 August 1923.

In October 1878, from her own study at home, Bella passed in both the Melbourne University's Matriculation Examination and its Civil Service Examination.

University

Enrolling in 1881, Bella went on to become the first woman ever to graduate from an Australian university, graduating Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), aged 25, from the University of Melbourne on 1 December 1883. It was reported that, "after receiving her degree Miss Guerin was enthusiastically cheered by those present". Later, she became the first woman to attain a Master of Arts (M.A.) from Melbourne University when she graduated on 5 December 1885; and on 23 April 1892, "Mrs. Bella Halloran (née Guerin)" of Melbourne, was admitted to the courtesy degree of M.A. ad eundem gradum at the University of Sydney.

Career

Teaching

Her first teaching position was at Loreto College, Ballarat, where she called for higher-education scholarships for Catholic girls, in order to assist "in the furtherance of a movement, which will place at the disposal of the social reformer, a band of noble, thoughtful women as a powerful influence for good, in the persons of our Catholic girl-graduates." She taught Matriculation classes and University subjects at the Ballarat School of Mines over five years, from 1887 — i.e., upon the School of Mines' official affiliation with the University of Melbourne in 1887 — until her marriage in 1891.

After her husband's death in 1893, Bella returning to teaching from financial necessity, She taught in Sydney, then Carlton, Prahran, and East Melbourne. From 1898 to 1903, in Bendigo, she operated University College, Bendigo. From 1904 to 1917 she taught at Camperdown, and in a succession of small Melbourne schools at South Yarra, St Kilda, Parkville, and Brunswick, with diminishing success. According to Farley Kelly, "her increasing political activity and disputes over conditions with the Education Department probably contributed to this outcome".

Women's Political Association

From the mid-1890s, whilst running University College, Bendigo, she became involved with suffragist issues, and became an office-bearer in the Bendigo Women's Franchise League. As vice-president of the Women's Political Association (1912-1914) Guerin co-authored Vida Goldstein's 1913 Senate election pamphlet. However, according to Farley Kelly, "[her] dual membership of non-party feminist and Labor Party organizations proved untenable".

In 1914 she began to write, and speak for the Labor Party, the Victorian Socialist Party, and the Women's Socialist League, and was recognized as a "witty, cogent and instructive" commentator on a range of controversial social issues, which included "the rights of illegitimate children", "brotherhood and sisterhood without sex distinction", and the "defence of English militant suffragettes".

Anti-war

Mrs. Bella Lavender, M.A. is not well-fitted physically for an out-door speaker. Her figure, tall and slight, would seem more at home in the schoolroom, but the big soul of her rises beyond the physical limitations of nature, defying despotism, defying anything that could come between her and her mission. Who, looking at this courageous woman, could doubt her when she said: "I am of the people; I love the people; and I would gladly suffer martyrdom to-morrow if such a sacrifice would benefit in any way my brothers and sisters — the workers of the world." The Australian Worker, 14 September 1916.

An ardent anti-war propagandist, and as president of the Labor Women's Anti-Conscription Committee, she led its campaign during the lead up to the 28 October 1916 Australian Conscription Referendum, speaking in Adelaide, Broken Hill, Victorian metropolitan centres, and Victorian country centres, "against militarism" and "in defence of rights of assembly and free speech".

Politics

Appointed vice-president of the Australian Labor Party's Women's Central Organizing Committee (W.C.O.C.) in March 1918, she aroused criticism for describing Labor women as "performing poodles and packhorses", "under-represented in policy decisions", and "relegated to auxiliary fund raising roles". From that time, and as a socialist feminist Bella only worked for Labor "so far as it stands for those principles represented by the Red Flag", "believing in the parliamentary system but desiring capitalism's elimination".

A "democratic grub"

During her famous speech to a public meeting of the Melbourne branch of the No-Conscription Fellowship, held in the Guild Hall, in Swanston Street on 29 June 1916, Bella alluded to Rob Shaw's recent political cartoon in The Labor Call (RS.1) which depicted Billy Hughes, the current Prime Minister of Australia, as a magnificent "Imperialist" butterfly emerging from a drab "Laborite" caterpillar body and, to great applause, remarked that her own political evolution "was exactly the reverse to that of Comrade Hughes", in that, in her case, she "began as an Imperialistic butterfly and ended up as a democratic grub".

Religion

In religion she moved away from her early Roman Catholicism, and moved to rationalism.

Personal life

"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".

Guerin's son, Marco (M.B. B.S.), who conducted a general practice in Adelaide from 1915, described her as "the kindest and most gentle of women".

Death

She died of cirrhosis of the liver, aged 65, at her son's residence in Norwood, South Australia on 26 July 1923, and was buried in the Catholic section of the West Terrace Cemetery on 28 July 1923.